Tenacious

I found this little snake in my backyard this afternoon. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but at only about 8 inches long, it must have been literally 1,000s of times smaller than me. Did it care? Did it quickly slither away upon being discovered? Uh, no. Gotta respect that.

Not your ordinary mollusc

While going through my regular evening ritual of perusing the sites on my blogroll (I always start at the bottom and work my way up for some reason - I don't really know why), I came across the latest post by Emile over at The World We Don't Live In. This post is about the ever-so-rare phenomenon of vertebrates mimicking invertebrates. Now, while that is an interesting topic in its own right, what struck me as absolutely fascinating was the mention of a creature I had no idea even existed - the Indonesian mimic octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus. (note: the creature is absolutely fascinating, not the fact that I had not heard of it - though I am surprised that such a critter had escaped my attention until now).

The video below does a good job of showing off this incredible quick-change artist. I'm starting to see why so many people think molluscs are so damn cool.

Cuttlefish babies!

In case you missed it, Kevin Z was the winner of the mystery photo contest - he correctly guessed identified those inch-long black things as cuttlefish egg cases. Congrats, Kevin! Your hard-earned loot is in the mail (or, rather, will be tomorrow).

Specifically, those were the egg cases of the common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, one of the organisms currently in residence here at RWU. One of our undergrads is working on more effective and efficient ways of breeding and raising them. The black color comes from ink that the female injects into each egg case.

The eggs hatched over this past weekend - 88 in total. Each hatchling is a tiny, yet fully formed cuttlefish that feeds, changes color, and inks if disturbed. They're very cute (for a mollusc).

Some pics of 2-day old cuttlefish (I'll try to get a better, close-up later when they're a little bigger). Each baby is about 1.5cm or so:




Here are some older, bigger cuttles (approx. 15-20 cm):

Garden Inverts

(click on images for larger view)

Wolf Spider with egg case (family Lycosidae; female)

Aphids (Uroleucon sp?) on Heliopsis

Weird animal, not-so-weird genome

(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:

The sequenced genome, with all of its peculiarities details, corroborates the idea that the platypus lineage is the earliest diverging mammalian lineage - diverging from the rest of the mammals over 160 million years ago. Side note: the marsupial-placental split occurred ~150 mya, and all modern placentals orders appeared by ~75 mya.

The genes for caseins, the proteins found in milk, align well with the casein gene families found in other mammals. This suggests, as expected, that milk production evolved before mammals evolved live birthing (or nipples - platypus secrete milk through pores in the skin).

Speaking of birthing, the platypus genome contains sequences that match mammalian genes for the zona pellucida, but also has copies of zona pellucida genes previously only found in amphibians, birds and fish. There is also a gene for the yolk-stored proteins, vitellogenins, that are also found in amphibians, reptiles, and birds, but that have been lost in non-monotreme mammals.

Genes for the proteins found in the platypus' reptilian-like toxins turn out to be novel sequences, independently evolved and are not homologous with reptile toxin genes. Toxin production in reptiles and platypus seems to be a case of convergent evolution. Interestingly though, the same defensin genes were co-opted in each case.

(Note: I was going to strike the word weird from this item, but I've decided that this is indeed weird.) Weirdest of all might be the sex chromosomes. Platypus sex chromosomes are known to be strange structures cytologically speaking, but it turns out that none of their X chromosomes match the X chromosomes of other mammals - they're more like the Z chromosome found in birds. A "normal" autosomal chromosome however matches the mouse X chromosome.

microRNA sequences are all over the place - platypus have both microRNA sequences that are found in birds, but not mammals, as well as microRNA sequences that are found in mammals, but not birds.

Further study of the genome will certainly add to the uniqueness of the platypus and will be helpful in understanding early mammal evolution. I think it's rather poetic that such an odd cool creature has such an odd cool genome. Wouldn't it have been disappointing if it didn't?

Weekly urchin - new toy edition

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:

Probably doesn't taste like chicken

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.

You can find anything on ebay

Is this for real?

Backyard visitors

Neither marine nor invertebrate. Go figure.

Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)

Following the Alewife

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

(For more info on alewives, check out this Audubon article and read John Hay's book)

Slowly, but surely

Littorina littorea - Paine's Creek Beach, Brewster, MA

Help a young invertaphile out

I got this wonderful email the other day. It's wonderful on several levels - first, it's proof that someone actually reads this thing; second, the author, clearly an intelligent and sane individual, rightfully sees the "inherent" greatness of Aristotle's Lantern; and third, the author is a college-bound student that already has the drive and interest to work with inverts - and not your standard inverts either, but the Tardigrada (bonus video here). I would like to do what I can to help this student out, but all I could offer was that she contact the biology faculty at Mt. Holyoke. She agreed to let me post her request here in hopes that someone else might be able to offer more. Please take a read and leave any suggestions in the comments.

This is totally out of the blue, but I stumbled upon your argument for the wondrousness of the aristotle's lantern in Echinoderms. While I always thought this structure to be inherently greater than the radula, I found your vehemence intriguing. I took it upon myself to find out who you were, and upon seeing that you taught in Massachusetts, a thought occurred. I will be attending Mount Holyoke college in South Hadley, MASS beginning next year and am intensely interested in invertebrates (namely the Tardigrade). If you know of any research or intern positions for those with no college experience under their belt, I would be eternally grateful to obtain such information. I may be starting in the spring term (in 2009), so anything starting then, or even as soon as the summer, would be ideal.