This is a photo of one of the three incubators our lab uses to culture phytoplankton under different temperature and CO2 conditions. It is important to keep these conditions stable in order to grow phytoplankton species successfully. All analysis depends on the assumption that these culturing conditions are met. An accident that occurred during our research was that the two high-CO2 incubators had CO2 leaking into the room whenever we opened their doors. However, because the ambient condition incubators did not have an adequate CO2 release system, we increased the CO2 concentration in the ambient incubator each time we opened its door. The solution we found was to move this incubator into a different room where the CO2 concentration was normal. This photo is therefore important to show how different lab conditions and the practice of lab protocols can be very different from theories, highlighting the importance of flexibility and troubleshooting in lab-based research.
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