Delaney Coleman

Delaney Coleman is a master's candidate in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, studying under Dr. Russ Hopcroft. She graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology. As an undergraduate, she assisted on various projects pertaining to fish, corals, jellyfish, and invertebrates using data collection methods such as spearfishing and scuba diving. From 2018 to 2019, she investigated behavioral responses to predatory stimuli in a tropical copepod species under direction from Drs. Petra Lenz and Dan Hartline. She will now be researching lipid accumulation in subarctic copepods with the assistance of Dr. Hopcroft.

Various species of calanoid copepods diapause at depth during most of the year in response to unfavorable environmental conditions in the Gulf of Alaska. When favorable conditions arise in the spring, they ascend to the surface to feed on the new abundance of phytoplankton. It is understood why copepods diapause, but the conditions that lead to diapause beginning are not known. I will be investigating what controls the onset of diapause in two species of subarctic copepods: Neocalanus flemingeri and Neocalanus plumchrus.