Joan Bernhard and Dan McCorkle

Joan Bernhard and Dan McCorkle met on a research cruise in the 1980s, when she was a Ph.D. student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and he was a postdoctoral investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They began working together on calcareous benthic foraminiferal culturing about eight years ago, when Bernhard was at the University of South Carolina. Besides striving with McCorkle to have a green thumb for foraminiferal culture (and growing a far nicer pony-tail!) Bernhard studies many aspects of benthic foraminiferal biology and ecology, including foraminiferal-prokaryote symbioses, impact of hydrocarbon seep chemistry on foraminiferal shell chemistry, and foraminiferal response to elevated carbon dioxide. McCorkle’s research interests, in addition to studying the controls on foraminiferal shell chemistry, include isotopic studies of carbon cycling at the seafloor and assessing the impact of ocean acidification (due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) on a range of marine calcifying organisms.