622777 external_news 1561557409 1561558838 Ocean acidification, caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, is having a negative impact on marine ecosystems. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Jeannette Yen, David Murphy, Deepak Adhikari, and Don Webster propose a novel method for monitoring ocean acidification. Their approach involves a miniscule marine snail and investigating how changes in ocean acidity affect its unique locomotive behavior. Yen, Murphy, Adhikari, and Webster aim to document the biomechanics of a range of planktonic species, including the sea butterfly, and input the data acquired into computational fluid dynamics models. These models, in turn, will be used to predict how their behavior will change in relation to variations in shell weight. If the link between ocean acidification and shell weight reduction is established and validated, planktonic locomotion could be used as an indicator of ocean acidification. Yen is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences. 

]]> 2019-06-19 1278 1275