Dr. Tamara Frank
- Physiology and Behavior
- Biological Oceanography
- Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Connecticut Medical School, Storrs Mansfield, Connecticut, U.S.A.
- Post-doctoral Fellow, Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport, Oregon, U.S.A.
- Post-doctoral Fellow, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Ft. Pierce, Florida, U.S.A.
- Ph.D. in Aquatic Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 1987
- M.A. in Aquatic Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 1985
- B.S. in Marine Biology, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA, 1980
Research Scientist
Center for Ocean Exploration and Deep-Sea Research
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
Fort Pierce, Florida
Dr. Tamara Frank is currently the head of the Visual Ecology Department in the division of Marine Science at HBOI. She is studying how downwelling light controls the behavior and distribution patterns of midwater animals during the day as well as how it triggers their vertical migrations at night. Her work combines in situ studies from the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible to quantify animal distribution patterns with shipboard based laboratory studies on the photosensitivity of animals brought up with midwater trawl nets. She is particularly interested in the adaptations of animal eyes to dim light environments, and on this expedition, will be working on benthic crustaceans retrieved from depths of up to 700 m. She has participated in over 70 research cruises, both as chief scientist and lucky hitchhiker, conducting work in the Gulf of Maine, and off the coasts of the Bahamas, Cuba, California, Hawaii and the Canary Islands.
Her educational background includes a B.A. from California State University, Long Beach, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of California, Santa Barbara, and post-doctoral fellowships from the University of Connecticut Medical School, Hatfield Marine Science Center in Oregon, and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.
Research Interests
- Vertical migrations of macrozooplankton and micronekton
- Zooplankton ecology, with emphasis on how light controls the distribution patterns of zooplankton and micronekton
- Adaptations to dim light environments in pelagic and benthic organisms
Research Projects
- Determining if there are shifts in sensitivity to light between shallow living juveniles and deeper living adults in ontogenetically migrating species
- Studies on optical and structural adaptations in crustaceans to different light environments
- Studies on the visual physiology and visual environment of benthic deep-sea crustaceans, many species of which have extremely large eyes, yet live well below the level at which any downwelling light remains
- Correlating behavior with visual physiology in shallow water crustaceans
- Relationship between bioluminescence and vision in the deep-sea benthos
Discoveries/Results
- Techniques for collecting deep-sea species alive and with intact eyes
- Sensitivity to UV light in deep-sea crustaceans
- First ever electrophysiological recordings from eyes of a deep-sea benthic crab
- First ever electrophysiological recordings from photoreceptors of a copepod
- Some deep-sea crustacean species are following an isolume during their vertical migrations, a hypothesis that had been discounted in recent years
- Part of the team that discovered mirror optics in a deep-sea four-eyed fish