Shoals Marine Lab on the 96-acre Appledore Island, six miles off the southern Maine coast, is not only a rich marine science environment for summer undergraduate courses but also a living laboratory where several Cornell graduate students collect field data each summer for cutting-edge research on island ecology.

For example, Joe Simonis, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology, studies predator-prey interactions in supratidal pools -- pools above tide level -- at Shoals, which is managed by Cornell and University of New Hampshire staffers. Specifically, he collects data on the foraging habits of water boatman insects -- the top predator in these little pools among the island's coastal rocks -- and the critters they prey upon.

Water boatmen, which have wings and hind legs that look like a pair of oars, live in the water but also fly between rock pools. Mobility is a great advantage, because if they deplete resources in one pool they can simply fly to another one. "You're able to get away with overexploiting if you can move well," Simonis said.

To learn how mobile these insects are, he has created artificial pools in tubs covered with chicken wire to keep birds out and set them among the island's supratidal zone. He counts the critters in each tub every few days to see how the numbers vary. Next summer, he plans to analyze whether the water boatmen deplete their resources before moving to another pool.

The research could have larger conservation implications. Wolf populations, for example, are also top predators that move to find prey, but lack of continuous habitat could threaten their survival if they over-hunt and then have nowhere to move.

Appledore's supratidal pools offer a perfect model system, Simonis said, adding that he appreciates spending his summers with the "vibrant and growing research community" at Shoals, compared with many of his classmates, who spend summers alone in remote locations collecting field data.

To better understand the effects of climate change on species distributions, Matt Connolly, an earth and atmospheric sciences master's student, took advantage of nearly 25 years of data collected through the lab's Field Marine Biology and Ecology class. Each year, undergraduates have collected detailed data on the abundance of organisms in the intertidal zone.

"Some parameters that could affect percent cover [the amount of space a species takes up within a defined area] are salinity, air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind speed and ice cover, all of which are affected by climate," Connolly said. By assessing the changes in species distributions over time, he hopes to better understand if climate-related conditions are playing a role.

Julie Brown, a graduate student in microbiology, studies how viruses persist, move through and influence marine ecosystems. Brown spent last summer on Appledore surveying marine RNA viruses (which have RNA -- ribonucleic acid -- as their genetic material) in the sediments and water column of Babb's Cove. This summer, she collected samples from different parts of the cove to study how the viruses move.

"As I do this research, I am learning to love the squawking seagulls and squeaking chicks as well as the people and culture of the island," she said.