This week's dial stopper brought to you by one of the best live bands in the history of music. And the letter 'C'. (confused? you must have missed this post)
(no, this isn't a picture of Jack)
Remember that stack of papers I have to grade? Well, I'm still working on them. But I had to stop and vent some frustration. Tell me how I interpret this:
One, single project, with four group members, on the effect of two different diets (Artemia and copepods) on jellyfish growth and budding. Here are summaries of each student's account of their methodology:
Student 1 - project ran for 23 days, fed jellyfish 10ml of the two different diets at first, then reduced to 5ml after 10ml was deemed too much.
Student 2 - project ran for 4 weeks, fed jellyfish 1ml of both diets.
Student 3 - project ran for 6 weeks, fed jellyfish 3ml of both diets.
Student 4 - project ran for 4 weeks, fed jellyfish 1ml of one diet, 5ml of the second
It's one thing (and expected) for members of a team to differ in how well they explain their experimental procedure - some leave things out that others include, some are more concise and understandable, but no one in this group agrees on the day-to-day details of the experiment. How does that happen?
Does this mean they didn't actually do the experiment and made stuff up? Was this a complete breakdown of teamwork and each individual did their own thing? Did one student do the whole thing and then screw with the other three by telling each something different?
The Beagle Project is the latest host for The Tangled Bank - a great collection of biology-laden posts.
While you're there buy a t-shirt or make a donation to their project!
In the car this morning a song by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones came on the radio. My daughter was fascinated by the lead singer (Dickey Barret). First she commented that his voice sounded strange. Then, after listening for a while she came to the conclusion that he sounds just like Cookie Monster. As I listened more closely myself, I think she might be on to something.
(for those of you unfamiliar with the Bosstones, I'll have something up on Friday to help make the Cookie Monster connection) 
The platypus genome put me in the mood for more evolutionary biology, so here are some interesting recent papers of an evolutionary bend (note: Abstracts available, but subscription or "pay-per-view" needed for full article access. Sorry.):
Amino acid sequence data from collagen extracted from the bones of Tyrannasaurus rex and the mammoth, Mammut americanum, were used to build a phylogeny of these two species. As expected, based on previous phylogenetic work, M. americanum groups with modern elephants and T. rex groups with modern birds (chickens to be exact). This paper builds on earlier success in using protein sequences to elucidate evolutionary history of extinct organisms.
Hermaphoditism evolves when mate-search efficiency is poor. In other words, if ... you ... move ... really ... slowly ... and ... don't come across another individual of your species all that often, it's best to be prepared when you do - it would really suck to look all that time for a mate only to come across an individual of the same sex and have to start the search all over again.
Analysis of oxygen isotope levels in the tooth enamel of extinct relatives of elephants suggest that modern probocidians evolved from aquatic or semi-aquatic forms. This is expected given the close phylogentic relationship between extant elephants and the sirenians (manatees and dugongs) and provides new arguments for the idea that elephant trunks may have originally evolved as a snorkel.
(After reading PZ Myers's post on the matter, I've decided to stop using "weird" to describe the platypus's genome. However, I still think the animal itself can aptly be described as weird.)
Nature reports today that the platypus genome has been sequenced by a large international team (note: subscription needed for full article). Fittingly, it seems that the genome is just as delightfully weird interesting as the platypus itself - a mixture of mammal genes interspersed with ancestral reptilian and avian sequences, with a bit of novelty thrown in, all of which tells us a great deal about mammalian evolutionary history.
Some highlights:
Part of my job as coordinator of the Undergraduate Center for Marine Life Sciences is to purchase equipment that could be used by students and faculty for research. The newest edition to the Center is a Sea & Sea DX-1G digital underwater camera and strobe. It seems on first inspection to be a marvelous piece of equipment. (Thanks, Rick, for using your power and influence to coerce some useful camera feedback from your "peeps" for me)
The second the battery finished charging, I grabbed the camera and headed down to the RWU wetlab to try it out. I must say that I'm really impressed with the quality of the images this camera takes, especially since these test shots were taken with me just sticking the camera into a bunch of tanks, hoping I was focusing on something, and using only the built-in flash instead of the big strobe. With some fine-tuning I think this will take some phenomenal shots out in the field.
First up, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, of course:
Here's an oyster toadfish trying to hide:
Apparently tautog like to snuggle with toadfish:
Lined seahorse:
Fire shrimp:
Baby Juvenile jawfish:
The clownfish thought I was going to feed them:
Drop what you're doing and go check out Coral Week at Deep Sea News - everything you never wanted to know about those cnidarious crusteose critters.
Better yet, start with ChrisM's post about echinoderms that eat corals.
Neither marine nor invertebrate. Go figure.
Kevin Z. of Deep Sea News and the Other 95% (or is it the Other 95% and Deep Sea News?) was supposed to be part of the Earth Day Earthcast 2008. Howevah, he ran into a small problem on the way...
I've been going to Cape Cod since before I can remember. I spent every summer there growing up, which undoubtedly has had a major hand in shaping who and where I am today. Yet after all this time, it took me until today to witness one of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring feats of biology the Cape has to offer - the running of the alewife. In fact, it wasn't until I read John Hay's The Run a few years back that I even knew such a phenomenon was right in front of me all this time. Written in the 1950s, this book is, as most John Hay books are, a wonderful combination of natural history and philosophy. Since reading it, timing and distance have kept me from witnessing the run for myself, but about a month or so ago, I decided that I would make a concerted effort to see it this year. So with camera in hand, I headed out to the Cape over the weekend in hopes of catching the little critters in action.
Alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus, are anadromous fish of the shad family (Clupeidae) found along the eastern seaboard of North America from Newfoundland south to the Carolinas. Also known as herring (though not a "true" herring), alewife spend the majority of their life at sea, returning to freshwater ponds to spawn (as opposed to catadromous fish, such as Anguilla eels, which live primarily in fresh water, but spawn in the ocean). After spending a few years in the ocean, feeding and growing and surviving, the alewife gather just offshore in late-March to early-April. Shortly after this, on some cue (temperature? light? tides? moon phase? boredom?), the alewife start to migrate up the various tidal creeks to their spawning grounds, first in spits and spurts of individuals and then finally, by mid to late April, en masse. On the Cape there are a number of historic "herring runs", but one of the best known (and healthiest) is the Stony Brook run in Brewster. This is the run that John Hay wrote about and this is the run that I visited to follow the path the alewife take.
The Stony Brook run begins here at the mouth of Paine's Creek, a tidal stream that empties into Cape Cod Bay at Paine's Creek Beach:
Alewife that have successfully reached maturity and have made it to this point must now run a gauntlet to the spawning grounds. As they leave the ocean and travel upstream, they meander approximately a half mile through Paine's Creek into fresher and fresher water:
At this point, the creek goes through a culvert:
and crossed under route 6A:
Emerging on the other side, Paine's Creek becomes known as Stony Brook. The alewife must now swim another half a mile or so through Stony Brook and its surrounding marshes:
I am sure not every alewife that enters Paine's Creek makes it this far, but the journey to this point has been a cake walk compared to what comes next. As the alewife approach the fish ladder they have to contend with a nightmarish scene right out of Finding Nemo:
The only way any alewife can make it past that is if they come through in such numbers that the gulls can't possibly catch them all. Those that make it this far school together in shallow pools before continuing on:
After they've had a chance to rest a bit, individual alewife start to make the final push and head up the fish ladder. Here they make sprints up each cascade and are bashed and batted by the water and rocks. Many have to make several attempts as they are pushed back down or smack against the sides of the ladder. The energy it takes to do this must be enormous.
Next it's through another culvert, under Stony Brook Road, past the old mill, and up the last stretch of the brook:
Those that make it this far are rewarded with their ultimate destination, the quiet of Lower Mill Pond:
and the right to spawn before turning around and heading back through the gauntlet to the sea, where the open jaws of the season's first stripers will be waiting for them. It's not easy being an alewife.
This was quite a sight to see and I recommend that anyone on or near the Cape to go check it out. I don't know how long the alewife will be running or if I happened to catch them on a plentiful day, but the numbers were staggering. So many that even the air smelled fishy. However, there were people around who were talking about how much more plentiful the herring were when they were kids and telling stories of people pulling baskets full of fish out of the stream (no taking is allowed now). I don't think these were simply curmudgeony back-in-my-day sorts of stories - alewife numbers are down all along the coast and some historic runs no longer run. A variety of factors are seemingly at fault, such as poorly regulated fisheries, destruction or obstruction of spawning grounds, and polluted waterways.
(UPDATE: just found a video taken at a Harwich, MA herring run a couple of days ago showing the better-than-expected alewife numbers this year.)
In addition to the moratorium on the alewife fishery there are programs in place to help monitor and restore the fish populations. Hopefully enough can be done to ensure the continuation of this primeval rite of spring. As John Hay wrote close to a half-century ago, the running of the alewife has meaning beyond a bunch of fish racing up a stream:
...it seemed to announce that bud scales on shrubs and trees would start to crack and fall away to let the inner shoots unfold as leaves and feed on the sun. It said that flies and wasps and spiders would come out of winter biding and sleeping, that the song sparrows would begin to sing in the willows and viburnum bushes...There is something exciting and strange about the sudden appearance of new life in the spring, coming from another region, another climate...They recur; they are recognizable; and yet they bring in endless tides and vivid journeys
At the Water's Edge by Carl Zimmer
Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean Carroll
The Ethical Assassin by David Liss
Genesis by Robert Hazen