Research Summary
A staple of the Caribbean diet, conch is easy to catch, nutritious, tasty, and conveniently equipped with beautiful shells that can be sold in the tourist trade.
But queen conch is also crucial to the health of a reef ecosystem. As grazers, they keep grasses and algae in check, and hermit crabs, young groupers, octopuses, and other tiny creatures find refuge in their shells, and they are prey to predators, such as skates and rays.
In much of the Caribbean, queen conchs have been overfished to the point of commercial extinction, but marine reserves like the Sapodilla Cayes offer much-needed refuges to juveniles and breeding-age adults alike.
To see how well the Reserve is doing its job, you'll survey aggregations of these impressive mollusks to determine population density and size structure. And by tagging conch, you will enable scientists to track individual mollusks over time. Snorkelers will survey and tag conch in shallow aggregations (<3m). Divers will survey and tag conch in known deeper aggregations (>3m) that have not be sampled before and help locate and survey additional deep aggregations, some of which could be spawning aggregations. All of this will help answer the key question for reserve management: are the conservation policies in place having the predicted and desired outcomes of protecting and replenishing queen conch populations?
Meet the Scientists
Dr. John A. Cigliano
Cedar Crest College
Dr Cigliano is the Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences and an Associate Professor of Biology at Cedar Crest College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. His research specialties include marine conservation ecology, queen conch ecology, octopus behavioral ecology and natural history. His field responsibilities include oversight of the entire project, leading field teams, education of field teams on queen conch ecology and marine reserve theory, research design and data analysis. Dr Cigliano has conducted research on queen conch conservation ecology in the Bahamas (Andros) and in the Turks and Caicos Islands (South Caicos).
Dr. Richard Kliman
Cedar Crest College
Dr Kliman is an Associate Professor of Biology, also at Cedar Crest College. He is a population geneticist with research interests in conservation genetics, natural history of closely related species and molecular evolution. Dr. Kliman collaborates with Dr. Cigliano on the queen conch research program, which combines fieldwork on population demographics with laboratory work on DNA sequence variation within and among conch populations. His field responsibilities include supervision of teams and education on the use of genetics to study population history and migration.