Aiptasia made an educational appearance at this year’s Deutsche SchülerAkademie, an academic summer camp for highly motivated and talented 15-19 year olds. Held in Urspring for two and a half weeks at the beginning of August, the aim of our course on “testing cooperation” was to give the young participants a chance to get some hands-on experience with the scientific method. We wanted them to come up with their own hypotheses and then proceed to test them experimentally. For this purpose, Aiptasia proved an excellent model system. Using colour as a proxy for symbiosis status, the students were able to investigate the benefits both partners draw from the symbiosis, the role of hydrogen peroxide in bleaching, and the reaction to stress more generally. A further group got interested in the movement of symbiotic Aiptasia towards light, looking into the effects of different colours. With very minimal lab equipment, the students were thus able to experience first hand the pains and pleasures of doing science, and they managed to collect some very nice data indeed. We thank Annika and Diana for making all this possible by providing us with Aiptasia and plenty of advice on how to handle them, Oliver Caspari and Agnes Köhler
