Ann Bucklin is a professor at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

known for her work using molecular tools to study

zooplankton Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community ("zoo" comes from the Greek word for ''animal''). Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents, and consequently drift or are carried along by ...

. Bucklin was elected a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

in 1995.

Education and career

Bucklin has an A.B. in biology from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

and earned her Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1980. Following her Ph.D., she was a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the

Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (MBA) is a learned society with a scientific laboratory that undertakes research in marine biology. The organisation was founded in 1884 and has been based in Plymouth since the Citadel Hi ...

and a postdoctoral scholar at

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

from 1980 until 1983. Bucklin worked at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

, first as a research professor and then as professor starting in 1998. She served as director of the New Hampshire Sea Grant Program from 1992 until 2005 when she moved to the

in Groton, CT where she was the head of the Department of Marine Sciences until 2014. From 2004 until 2010, Bucklin was the lead scientist for the

Census of Marine Zooplankton The Census of Marine Zooplankton is a field project of the Census of Marine Life that has aimed to produce a global assessment of the species diversity, biomass, biogeographic distribution, and genetic diversity of more than 7,000 described specie ...

, a field project connected to the Census of Marine Life project. During 2014-2017, she served as chair of the Working Group on Integrative Morphological and Molecular Taxonomy (WGIMT) of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Since 2019 to present, Bucklin has served as chair of the MetaZooGene working group (WG157) within the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR).

Research

Bucklin is known for her research using molecular tools to characterize the ecology and evolution of marine organisms. Starting with her graduate research on the sea anemone, Metridium senile, Bucklin worked on patterns of reproduction and genetic differentiation of species. She has used genetics to track a variety of marine species including tube worms from

hydrothermal vents A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspot ...

, amphipods,

euphausiids Krill are small crustaceans of the order Euphausiacea, and are found in all the world's oceans. The name "krill" comes from the Norwegian word ', meaning "small fry of fish", which is also often attributed to species of fish. Krill are consi ...

, and

copepods Copepods (; meaning "oar-feet") are a group of small crustaceans found in nearly every freshwater and saltwater habitat. Some species are planktonic (inhabiting sea waters), some are benthic (living on the ocean floor), a number of species have p ...

. Through her research, she has used molecular protocols to differentiate and identify closely-related and cryptic species of copepods and euphausiids, examine patterns of population genetic variation and structure, and describe evolutionary relationships of selected zooplankton species and groups. Bucklin uses DNA barcoding to discriminate and identify species of marine zooplankton, and the resulting data has implications for ocean health. She uses DNA metabarcoding to analyze patterns of biodiversity of marine zooplankton based on environmental samples, including time-series collections during ecosystem monitoring programs.

Selected publications

* * * *Bucklin, A., P.K. Lindeque, N. Rodriguez-Ezpeleta, A. Albaina, and M. Lehtiniemi (2016) Metabarcoding of marine zooplankton: Progress, prospects and pitfalls. J. Plankton Res. 38: 393-400. https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbw023 *Bucklin, A., K. DiVito, I. Smolina, M. Choquet, J.M. Questel, G. Hoarau and R.J. O’Neill (2018) Population genomics of marine zooplankton. In: ''Population Genomics: Marine Organisms'', O.P. Rajora and M. Oleksiak (Eds.), Springer. Pp. 61-102. https://doi.org/10.1007/13836_2017_9 *Bucklin, A., K.T.C.A. Peijnenburg, K.N. Kosobokova, T.D. O’Brien, L. Blanco-Bercial, A. Cornils, T. Falkenhaug, R.R. Hopcroft, A. Hosia, S. Laakmann, C. Li, L. Martell, J.M. Questel, D. Wall-Palmer, M. Wang, P.H. Wiebe, A. Weydmann-Zwolicka (2021) Toward a global reference database of COI barcodes for marine zooplankton. Marine Biology 168 (78). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-021-03887-y *Bucklin, A., K.T.C.A. Peijnenburg, K.N. Kosobokova, and R. Machida (2021) New insights into biodiversity, biogeography, ecology, and evolution of marine zooplankton based on molecular approaches. ICES Journal of Marine Science, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab198

Awards and honors

*Oberlin College Aeolian Fellowship (1980) *Fulbright Senior Fellowship, Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway (1993-1994) *Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1995) *Member, Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (2006) *

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES; french: Conseil International de l'Exploration de la Mer, ''CIEM'') is a regional fishery advisory body and the world's oldest intergovernmental science organization. ICES is headqu ...

(ICES) Outstanding Achievement Award (2019) * University of Connecticut Faculty Excellence in Research and Creativity-Sciences Award (2020)

References

External links

* Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Oberlin College alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Connecticut faculty Women molecular biologists American marine biologists {{DEFAULTSORT:Bucklin, Ann Year of birth missing (living people) Living people