Tyler Carrier: Invertebrate investigator

November 2, 2015 Alumni, Marine Sciences, Signature and Emerging Areas, Student profiles

After Tyler Carrier took a course focused on invertebrates — an animal that lacks a backbone — during his first-year at the University of Maine, he was hooked.

Carrier graduated from UMaine in May 2015 with a B.S in marine sciences. His honors thesis explored the interactions between sea urchins and alexandrium — a species that produces toxins that induce paralytic shellfish poisoning. His findings were published in the journal Biological Bulletin last June.

Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Carrier was one of 10 students in the state to receive the Maine Sea Grant Undergraduate Scholarship in 2014 and was also awarded the Sea Grant Program Development funds.

He is now a M.S candidate in biology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he is working as a graduate research assistant in professor Adam Reitzel’s laboratory.

“The University of Maine, its faculty and staff, and vigorous marine sciences program gave me a disciplined freedom to explore— intellectually and physically— the marine realm, what it has to offer, and where my niche may be,” said Carrier.

Maine Sea Grant’s full profile is available online.