Andros Island, Sept. 3 — There’s more than one way to view a reef, and I don’t mean by snorkeling or diving.

The experts assembled here at Forfar Field Station see the reef through two distinct but complementary lenses: systematics and ecology.

Systematists collect animals and look at them closely, dissecting them, finding out about their anatomy and grouping them with others of their kind. Ecologists take a more general approach. They look at different species too, but pay closer attention to how those species interact and affect each other.

Brian LaPointe, an algal ecologist from Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, is examining algae on the Andros reef. At other study areas in the Bahamas — the Exumas and Abaco — he found algae growth outpacing that of other reef organisms. He expects to find the same kind of relationship on the reef here.

"We’re looking for themes," he says, "building a bridge between disciplines."

Mollusk specialist Paula Mikkelsen of the American Museum of Natural History views ecology as a way of studying communities and what makes them work. But ecologists first need to identify the animals they collect in the field, she says, which implies a foundation in systematics.

I ask why she can’t study a species in its environment without collecting it.

"Sometimes you just can’t identify a species from viewing it during a dive," Paula says. "And if you bring it in, look at it and try to let it go again, often it’s too fragile and will die.

"A lot of what I work with is dead animals in jars in museum collections. With live specimens here, I get a better feeling for what the animals are, where they live, what they live on, maybe what they eat."

Studying live animals in the field gives scientists a better appreciation for the variety of species as part of a systematic study, she adds.

Paula is a selective collector, limiting herself to creatures requiring further study.

"I won’t collect a queen conch, for example, because I know enough about queen conchs," she says.

Samples she gathers in the field enhance museum collections, which in turn provide specimens of study for other scientists — molecular biologists, for instance.

Museum specimen collections are hugely important, says project leader Dan Brumbaugh — especially in light of disappearing coral reefs. (The World Resources Institute reported last year that more than half of the Earth’s living coral reefs were threatened by human activities.)

"Museums are going to be the only records of what’s been lost," Dan says.

Clearly, systematists and ecologists have a symbiotic relationship — not unlike the one that the organisms of the Andros reef have with each other. As Paula says, "We work well together. It makes us think in another realm."

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