The Other 95%

A Cool New Backyard Visitor!

2009-06-19T07:51:00.003-04:00

One of the joys about moving, and there are but few, is discovering the new critters inhabiting your property! My wife found this Spinybacked Orbweaver hard at work in our yard yesterday.

Zoanthid Histology

2009-06-12T13:33:00.003-04:00

I uploaded some histology of a new zoanthid for collaborators in Japan to look at. Flickr is a great tool for sharing images and now I've found a work-related use for it! I don't have anything labeled but the descriptions for each image tell you what it is. The blue globby things are forams. Zoanthids are known to incorporate sand and sediment into their body wall to make them more rigid. As you can see from some of the cross sections, the mesenteries have very weak musclature. The staining protocol I used is called Masson's trichrome. Red stains for acidic tissues, like muscle fibers, while blue stains for basic tissues, such as connective tissue.

Hoverfly Closeup

2009-06-06T09:53:00.002-04:00

Syrphid hoverfly on cornflower #4 by Lord V @Flickr

Wear your Invert

2009-06-03T21:49:00.006-04:00

We made our annual pilgrimage to a shopping mall the other day to visit the Apple Store (Closed for renovations!) and the tea store. On our way out Tammy spied some cool earings hanging in a small shop. What caught her eye from outside the store was the blue heron Cloisonné earrings. Once inside though she fell for the Monarch Butterflies. Today when I got home she showed me the creators website bamboojewelry.com. Tammy was psyched that they had nudibranch pins and earrings!

Actually they have a nice collection of marine and terrestrial invertebrates.

A persfect gift for your invert lover (take that however you need to!) or for yourself. Of course if you insist on having relations with a porpoise, Bamboo has you covered there too. But seriously wouldn't you rather wear a nudi?

The Deepest Cuke

2009-06-02T22:38:00.004-04:00

A WHOI summer student fellow, holding one of the deepest sea cucumbers ever found, recovered from the Mariana Trench. Stunning to think of this little echinoderm living 9,000-11,000m down with pressures of 16,000psi or more. Image copyright WHOI.

The deep exploration buzz online lately has justifiably been about the hopefully avoidable, premature retirement of the JSL manned subs – read up on the issue at Deep Sea News, then SIGN UP to try and save them – but there is another vehicle out there right now that deserves some praise: Nereus.

Out of Woods Hole, Nereus is an ROV designed from the ground up to go to the absolute depths of the oceans. On the 31st of May, it went all the way to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the oceans at 10,902m. Nereus is now the only currently operating vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench and only the third in history to have done so: the manned Trieste in 1960 and the ROV Kaiko in 1995-1998. Read more about the technological hurdles involved in designing and building Nereus, along with it's maiden voyage to the bottom of the seas. The very bottom.

Circus of the Spineless #39 Is Up!

2009-06-01T18:04:00.002-04:00

Bug Girl's Blog is the host of this months Circus of the Spineless! Marine inverts represent with bivalves, crayfish and jellies. Also plenty of insects and arachnids for your viewing pleasure as well. Enjoy some fine nature writing and photography!

JSLs: Deep Diving Invert Friends in Need!

2009-05-31T20:39:00.007-04:00

In case you haven't heard form Deep Sea News or Pharyngula (or my own post at Eclectic Echoes), the Johanson Sea Link manned submersibles have been slated for retirement and their tender ship the R/V Seward Johnson put up for sale. Kevin and I hope you will join us in signing a petition to the powers that be in Florida to reconsider this decision and seek every opportunity find funding for them as a vital asset for science and the state.

The Johnson Sea Link submersibles

The JSL submersibles (Johnson Sea Link I and Johnson Sea Link II) are unique manned submersibles that were designed and built at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in the 1970's. JSL I was launched in 1971 and JSL II launched in 1975. The submersibles were built around a 6' diameter, 5.25" thick acrylic sphere that serves as the cockpit and main viewing area, where the pilot and chief dive scientist sit. In the sphere they have a stunning 270+ degree field of view. The aft cabin was originally designed to carry lockout divers (used to survey the USS Monitor, but was converted to a secondary observation cabin which can carry a second crew member and scientist.

While these were both launched over 30 years ago, they are among the youngest manned submersibles in the US science fleet, and they are still quite capable, having logged over 9000 dives during the years and having quite a busy schedule for the remaining year.

But Why Should Invertebrates (and invert lovers) Care?

Well, how about some invertebrate highlights from the JSL career:

In 1975 JSL I discovered the Oculina Bank. An incredible deep water coral reef off of Florida. The JSL crews have returned there frequently and their work led to designation of the Oculina Bank Habitat Area of Particular Concern and the Oculina Bank Expermental Closed Area. Further work by scientists on JSL missions have enumerated the ecology of these reefs including hundreds of invert species which hide among the coral branches and spaces.
Mapping and exploration by JSL led to protection on sections of Lophelia reefs.
By my rough count reading abstracts only from a Google Scholar search the JSLs are were instrumental in the discovery and collection of at least 100 new marine invertebrate species and at least one new fresh water decapod. (I'd love to get a firmer number on this, I wonder if anyone from HBOI knows?)
Discovered methane-consuming worms and clams in methane lakes
Discovered a number of sponges with chemical compounds capable of halting the growth of human cancers

And that's just a start from someone who is not affiliated with the Sea Link program at HBOI, I wonder how much more they could provide.

Of course there are many non-invertebrate reasons to care as well. There are only 16 manned research submersibles in operation around the world, 8 in the United States. These two, with their unique capabilities would be quite a loss. Whats more the outreach and future explorer excitment value of the JSL's is huge. To put it in NASA geek terms, ROV's are the Delta-V orbital launch vehicles (e.g. "rocket") and manned submersibles such as Alvin and the JSL's are the Space Shuttles of underwater exploration.

So head over to Deep Sea News and read the first hand accounts of the JSLs from Dr. M and Kevin. While you're at it check out Southern Fried Scientist's question "Manned or Unmanned?" and a bit of my response to that question can be found in my post at Eclectic Echoes. But no matter what else you do, please read the petition and sign it if you agree with us that these vehicles are simply too valuable to retire. Then reward yourself for doing a good thing with some short movies of the JSLs' and the R/V Seward Johnson.

Warty Sea Star

2009-05-18T22:25:00.002-04:00

Warty sea star, originally uploaded by sbailliez.

Now this is a cool looking sea star!

Of course the questions start racing through the head -
What are the warts?
What purpose do they serve, if any?
Why are some distended from the body and others not?
Do the warts have pedicellariae ?

Chris?!?!
Help!!

Tiny Friends

2009-05-17T15:29:00.003-04:00

We found an ootheca recently, and brought it in to watch the hatching of 85+ tiny (less than 1cm long) mantids. They have now taken up residence in the garden hopefully keeping the early spring aphids at bay.

Johann's newest pet, originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

SpeciesDay - Unionidae

2009-05-15T21:39:00.013-04:00

It's been a bit quieter around here than Kevin and I prefer, but now the finals are all done and I can finally say "I can has cheezburger wit dat?"

Seriously though, in the next month or so there will be some changes in this space... in the mean time:

Did you know there are ~~198~~ 199 invertebrates listed under the Endangered Species Act?

Yep, inverts make up 34% of the 575 animals protected under ESA. But is this good or bad that inverts are underrepresented here??

Care to guess how many of those ~~198~~ 199 are molluscs?
I'll give you a starting point - only two of the ~~198~~ 199 invert species protected under ESA are cnidarians. Elkhorn Coral (Acropora palmata) and Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) are listed as Threatened. First correct answer, gets a small hand made tote bag free (allow 3-4 weeks for creation and delivery though!)

Today, May 15th is Endangered Species Day, and the the net was all atwitter with postings and tweets about endangered species. I just got done with the prototype for an outreach product that includes some of those endangered molluscs so I tweeted out the Shinyrayed Pocketbook (Lampsilis subangulata) a member of that marvelous group of freshwater mussels, the Unionidae.

If you recall from our earlier posting, this is the group of freshwater bivalves that has the habit of spitting its spawn into the face of an unsuspecting fish. The spawn are technically a form of larvae unique to these mussels called the glochidia and for some reason all my vertebrate loving friends seem to think that the whole "spewing spawn in your face" technique is rather disturbing. The young molluscs that are now in the face and mouth of the hapless fish attach to the its gills and encyst there. They feed on the blood in the gills until they are ready to drop to the sediments and metamorphose into a full adult form.

The shiney-rayed pocketbook is found in Alabama, Florida and Georgia, mainly in the Chattahoochie and Flint rivers. In its most recent review it was assessed as endangered with a recovery priority of 5 (high threat and low potential for recovery). The good news though is that from 2003 to 2007 the range of the Shiney-rayed Pocketbook did extend into more of the river than it had been in recent years.

The shiney-rayed pocketbook handles the details of reproduction and larval distribution a little differently than our last Unionoida. Our last fresh water mollusc, the Snuffbox, lures a fish in with it's mantle flaps which look like a small fish. When the fish attacks the lure, the snuffbox springs its trap, catching the logperch's head between it's valves. It then uses it's mantle to smother the fish for a few moments. When it releases the smothering hold on the fish a little, it also releases it's glochidia which is has been brooding in the shell. The fish gasps for water (air) and gets water and glochidia.

The shiney-ray takes another very interesting tack at larval distribution. Its females also brood the young until they reach the glochidia stage then release them to parasitise largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) and spotted bass (M. punctatus). The season for releasing glochidia will be begin in just a few weeks, late May through August.) The females, create a superconglutinate, a group of large packets (conglutiates) of glochidia attached to what appears to be a long transparent mucus rope.

The superconglutinate strongly resembles a small fish, which lures in larger predatory fish. When a larger fish attacks the superconglutinate the mass ruptures and glochidia are freed to attach to the gills of the fish. The glochidia parasitize a fish host until they are ready (able?) to metamorphose into juvenile mussels and settle to the substrate in sandy or muddy, slow moving regions. It is thought that the main purpose of the parasitic stage is not actually for nutrition and growth, but for transportation and distribution since the larvae would be unable to fight even a weak river flow to hold position or fight upstream, but attached to a fishes gills they can expand upstream or at least maintain position. This is borne out to some degree by recent expansion of L. subangulata up current in some locations.

Of course a video is highly warranted here, so courtesy of M.C. Barnhart, I give you the close cousin of L. subangulata showig off her superconglutinate. The orange-nacre mucket (Lampsilis perovalis, the species in the video, is one of only 2-3 other species known to create a superconglutinate.

References:

Roe, K., Hartfield, P., & Lydeard, C. (2001). Phylogeographic analysis of the threatened and endangered superconglutinate-producing mussels of the genus Lampsilis (Bivalvia: Unionidae) Molecular Ecology, 10 (9), 2225-2234 DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-294X.2001.01361.x

Bogan, A., & Roe, K. (2008). Freshwater bivalve (Unioniformes) diversity, systematics, and evolution: status and future directions Journal of the North American Benthological Society, 27 (2), 349-369 DOI: 10.1899/07-069.1

Barnhart, M., Haag, W., & Roston, W. (2008). Adaptations to host infection and larval parasitism in Unionoida Journal of the North American Benthological Society, 27 (2), 370-394 DOI: 10.1899/07-093.1

New Circus of the Spineless and Carnival of the Blue!

2009-05-05T22:36:00.003-04:00

Loads of buggy fun at The Birder's Lounge, host of this month's edition of the Circus of the Spineless. Go on now, scurry away and read it.

Send your spineless submissions for next month's carnival to Bug Girl! Check out the CotS homepage for more updates and info.

Don't forget to check out the Carnival of the Blue too! Hosted this month by Sea Notes, a blog from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Send next month's submissions to Mark Powell at Blogfish.

Fast Snails

2009-04-29T08:03:00.001-04:00

Snails Go west ! Funny TimeLapse from www.time-lapse.fr on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Unique Daily.

“Every evening, after my automatic water system stops, all the snails who where hidden behind flowers go out and go on the grass to make parties, eating and drinking! They move from east to west!”

Invert vs. Vert 19: Belizean Arachnid edition

2009-04-28T10:17:00.000-04:00

Just so you know, Belizean arachnids ain't messin around.

See the rest of the challenges!

A most awesome blog on Mites!

2009-04-27T21:50:00.003-04:00

Its a morphology heaven!

Hat tip to Adrian T. via Mike H.

Flying Octopus

2009-04-27T11:25:00.002-04:00

Monday needs some joviality! What would you do if you saw a giant octopus flying overhead?

I just hope it was all recovered and none ended up in the sea!

Linkalicious Sunday!

2009-04-25T21:43:00.008-04:00

I have just a few moments of free time to post something up, so thought I would point everyone in the direction of some good invert posts from some of our friends form the past two weeks or so.

The Brine Queen highlights the first species of marine invertebrate protected under ESA as endangered - Haliotis sorenseni

Chris, of the Echinoblog, has two recent posts on my favorite echinoderms, the feather sea stars.

Rick MacPherson has a molluscan species ID request and brings us some good news – there is a strong coral conservation bill making it's way through the house. Of course the bill could always always use a little help by emailing/calling/writing your rep and letting them know that the bil is important to you.

KaylinQ pointed me to Pagan Wanderlust, who reveals what happened to the plans for a Bathynomus Giganteus CD - then uploads all 17 tracks for your free listening pleasure! If you like any of the songs, please contribute at least $12 (~ cost of a average CD) to the Marine Conservation Society, or another ocean conservation group of your choice.

Another wave of the tentacle to KaylinQ for exposing me to a brilliant new (well new too me) online comic with a recent panel featuring what happens when a cephalopod meets Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum.

Hoxful Monsters has news of a study in which sponges are the base of the metazoan tree not ctenophores and the nervous system evolved once. That suggests however that hox genes evolved multiple times or evolved once and were lost several times. It'll be interesting to see how this one sorts out.

Finally Christie pulls out the invert Ewwww! with the Loa Loa worm (a real must see!) and Miriam confounds invert cool with baby mammal cute with a Puppy that glows from cnidarian red fluorescent proteins.

Happy Earthworm Day!

2009-04-23T10:32:00.003-04:00

In case you didn't know, today has been declared International Earthworm Day!

Of course it's a great invert to choose for it's own day. Aside from Barnacles (we all know how wonderful they are) and evolution, nothing seemed to occupy Darwin's curiosity as much as earthworms. For over three decades he studied them, off and on, and wrote papers and books about them and their effects in the soil.

Unfortunately today is a chock-a-block, with end of semester work and a seminar tonight so I doubt I'll be able to put together anything new. But here a link to all our past earthworm ramblings here and of course...

Earthworm Porn by a true friend of the invertebrates Isabella Rossellini.

La Princesse

2009-04-22T13:06:00.001-04:00

La Princesse, part of Les Mécaniques Savants by La Machine, makes it's way through the streets of Yokohama. It is all part of celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the Port of Yokohama.

I would dearly love to see them marching down the streets of Mystic with the spider. Even better a shrimp or crab, or maybe, a deep sea isopod!

Insect Ecology Lecture

2009-04-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Just one of many lectures available at the new Pulse Project site. Looks like I can keep up with a weekly lecture series even when I am away from university!

Nudibranchs, Coral and Math

2009-04-20T13:16:00.003-04:00

A TED talk on one of my favorite invertebrate outreach projects out there. A favorite because it is viral, involves textiles and it's working! Thousands of participants have gotten involved in the project and come away with a far greater understanding of the issues facing our reefs.

NEAQ

2009-04-16T21:42:00.006-04:00

A brief departure from our normal programming to ask your support for one of our regular "friend of the inverts" Jeff Ives and the New England Aquarium.

The aquarium was recently listed as an historic building by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a fitting designation considering it was the world's first modern aquarium, with a unique and remarkable architecture. As Jeff points out, this designation puts the aquarium in the company of the Old North Church and Paul Revere's House. Environmental conservation meets cultural preservation!

More to the point though, it opens a new avenue of grants and financing to the Aquarium as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. There is currently a grant that will be awarded to one of the historic landmarks of Boston based on a vote. We get to chose which historic landmark in Boston gets the money. How original and refreshing! From today (17 April) to the 17th of May we can all vote once per day for the landmark we want to see get the grant.

So check out all the historic landmarks and cast your vote. Then cast a vote each day until May 17th. I hope you will agree with Jeff and vote for the aquarium. If the aquarium does get the grant, Jeff has promised a special surprise for Kevin and The Other 95% starring some of the New England Aquarium's most charismatic residents!

Friday Movie - Mussel Cam!

2009-04-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

For all those who just can't get enough of their bivalves, especially of the Mytilidae, Flex Mussels has the perfect recipe for you, well the have lots of great recipes in their New York Restaurant, but online for your visual stimulation, they offer – MusselCam live from their Prince Edward Island location!

Gina, you were right about this one – part of why Ceph's are my favorite Molluscs.

Red Abalone - Haliotis rufescens

2009-04-15T10:48:00.000-04:00

Red abalone, originally uploaded by TVN.

The characteristic red abalone with its reddish shell, 3-4 open ports in the shell,black or black and cream epipodium, and black tentacles. This one is starting a new shell port and closing up the oldest still open one at the same time. You can see the even older ports which have been sealed with shell, spiraling back to the oldest part of the shell on the the left of the picture. The holes are used for respiration and sanitation. Yes, that means it poops and breathes through the same shell holes. It also releases eggs or sperm (abalone have separate sexes) to the water column during broadcast spawning sessions through the same holes. A great page on the general biology of abalone, including dissection, cleaning and cooking is available at MarineBio.net.

If you're eating abalone from the United States, the Red Abalone, Halioti rufescens is the one you're likely having. It's a good seafood choice too, since it comes from an aquaculture operation. Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program lists farmed abalone a Best Choice. There is very limited recreational fishing for H. rufescens in Northern California, and all commercial fisheries for abalone in the United States were closed in the 1990's, so it is the red abalone aquaculture operations of California and Mexico that are the core of the U.S. abalone market. That aquaculture (and fishery) interest is also a big driver for gaining more knowledge of the general biology, reproduction and larval success factors etc to improve culturing and aquaculture success as well as wild stock conservation.

As a kid I spent a lot of time just North of Santa Barbara, California. One of my favorite things to do, naturally enough, was to head to the beach. Especially the rocky coast just north of the Pt. Conception lighthouse where we would examine the tide pools and sometimes, when in season, pick abalone for dinner as a treat. I have to admit I love eating abalone.

We would take a 9+ inch (~230mm) abalone from time to time, though the norm was more around 8-9 inches (200-230mm). Turns out that is quite a catch by today's standard when wild picked (shore accessible), as I understand it, average only just over 7 inches (175mm), which is also the minimum catch size. You might think that a one inch difference in size is not that big a change for 30+ years, but it can represent a dramatic age difference in the animal.

Shell length (mm) by age (years) for Haliotis rufescens based on data from

After making it through two lecithotrophic (yolk absorbing) larval stages, juveniles settle and begin feeding on diatoms and other microflora on benthic surfaces. After six months they will be between 1/4 and 1/2 inches across (at the widest point) and transition to begin feeding more on macroalgae. By three years old they are 2 inches across or more. At 5 years old they will have attained a 4 inch shell, the size that farm raised abalone are generally taken at.

By the time the abalone are 6" long they are 9 years old and females are reaching peak fecundity. To reach the 7" recreational fisheries limit requires another 3 years of growth. The next inch of growth requires another 6 years of healthy growing. Those 9 and 10" beauties we caught many years ago would have been 25 to 30 years old!

Trivia Note: It was the white abalone, that has the distinctly unenviable honor of becoming the first marine invertebrate to be listed as endangered under ESA.

Deep Fried Shrimp!

2009-04-15T07:43:00.005-04:00

Kevin gets published!

After a three year gestation period, Kevin, and co-author Stephane Hourdez' 20 page paper "A new species of Alvinocaris (Crustacea: Decapoda: Caridea: Alvinocarididae) from hydrothermal vents at the Lau Basin, southwest Pacific, and a key to the species of Alvinocarididae." is out in the wild!

In it they describe a bigger, oranger species of alvinocaridid, Alvinocaris komaii, discovered in the Lau Basin of the South Pacific. I always love species description papers and this one does not fail to delight with wonderful holotype illustrations including details of the distinctive telson and dactyli of some of the pereopods . They also discuss the new species place in the whole Alvinocaris genus, and oh yes, a dichotomous key of all known species of Alvinocarididae!

I'm really impressed with the paper and with species description, molecular evidence and dichotomous key it is very complete! Awesome job.

So, I take it A. komaii was named for Tomoyuki Komai of Natural History Museum and Institute in Japan?

Lophozozymus incisus

2009-04-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Lophozozymus incisus - one of the most beautiful crabs in the world, originally uploaded by artour_a.

There are beautiful crustaceans and then there is Lophozozymus incisus!
What a beauty! And well captured by Artour_a. But not one you would want to eat as there are reports of them having tetrodotoxin. From Society, French Polynesia

Tsai et al. (2006) Tetrodotoxin in several species of xanthid crabs in southern Taiwan. Food Chemistry. vol. 95 (2) pp. 205-212
doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2004.12.032