Adventures in Spineless Science!

ARMSed and Ready

2011-10-30T17:54:00.000-04:00

Hey, remember all that time when I wasn't posting? One of the things we were doing was survey dives in the Gulf off Cedar Key and Steinhatchee looking for suitable habitat to deploy some ARMS. (You might remember ARMS from this post). This is a continuation of the survey work we did on the R/V Weatherbird back in March (remember this or that or this other post), but the water was much warmer this time, approaching 90 degrees! We were looking for hard-bottom areas, which turned out to be rarer than we might have anticipated. Most of Gustav's quick peeks at the bottom revealed long stretches of sand, but a few times we found what we were looking for and went down to do a more extensive survey of the area. These areas had lots of sponges and Caulerpa algae

and lots and lots of tunicates of various types

So now that we'd found some potential sites to set up some ARMS, where were we going to get them? Thank goodness for Woody at the Smithsonian Research Station in Ft. Peirce. They had some old disassembled ARMS that they were willing to let us use, and Woody even put them together for us (except for the base for ease of transport). So what do 27 ARMS look like after they've been driven back to Gainesville and piled on a cart?

It sure would be foolish for one person to put 367 pounds of metal and pvc all together on a cart and then expect to move that cart over a non-flat surface...unless that person were a glutton for punishment, or placed well in an arm-wrestling competition, or both.

So now we have (some of) the monitoring locations, and we have the ARMS. The boat is repaired, now all we need is Gustav. He's making an appearance in November so we can go install them: 3 per site, 3 sites per location, 3 locations. He'll only be around for a few days so we're sure to be busy.

All this talk of ARMS reminds me of someone else

Dickinson Hall has a new mascot. In order to ward of the bad mojo that can follow from naming the animals in the aquarium, we call her The Octopus. The picture above was taken when she was actually much younger (and smaller) and had not yet eaten all her non-echinoderm, non-cnidarian rommates. Now she's much bigger and growing progressively more clever. We often feed her live clams inside a jar with the lid on which is inside a large hamster ball with the lid on. After opening up all the contraptions to get to her food, she sometimes sits inside the ball to eat. We don't know what species she is, but we've recruited Julie to slip a little octopus tissue (from a tentacle shed) into her queue of tissues for DNA extraction. I'll keep you posted.

With the return of diving I should have some more field pictures to post before too long. In the interim John and I will be busy getting the collection in order: labels, put-away, loans, incoming collections. Gustav's current prime directive is to get things organized to make room for more specimens. And don't worry, even though we still have ARMS installation and retreival posts in our future, I won't run out of puns for the post titles.

:) Mandy

Group Activities

2011-10-18T09:04:00.000-04:00

It's been way too long since my last posting, but I have so many good-bye posts piling up ( Hsiu, Art, Jenna...did I do one for Machel!?) that I've been putting it off. Well, I decided to forgo the good-bye posts for the time being and focus on togetherness. Although this blog is really all about the awesomeness of the Invertebrate Division, the truth is that the whole FLMNH is pretty awesome; here are some of the projects that we've shared with other divisions (or they've shared with us).

Several months ago a strange creature wandered into the range, and I was brave enough to tackle it, as seen in the photo below.

A quick call upstairs to some of the other ranges confirmed what we suspected, not only was this animal a vertebrate, it turns out it was a bird, more specifically a Muscovy Duck. It's not known to be especially dangerous (lacking claws, spines, venom, spicules, cuvierian tubules, nematocysts, or any other invertebrate armament), and it was wearing a diaper, so we welcomed him into our range, backbone and all.

Because my tackling-expertise had been demonstrated during the duck event I just mentioned, it's strange that I wasn't invited to participate in the project illustrated in the next photo.

The fish range moved several large sharks from their old tanks to shiny new ones. Jenna and John were there to help out and photodocument. Some specimens, like the shark above, are just so large that there isn't room to properly or safely house them in Dickinson Hall. Some of the larger museum specimens, like complete and mounted skeletons, are on display at Powell Hall (the public face of the FLMNH), and some are kept in the large specimen storage facility in another building on campus. This is a specimen that we have in off-site storage.

Thanks Jeff Gage/Florida Museum for this photo!

This Giant Squid was caught floating on the surface off the coast of Florida. He is definitely a giant squid, but in this case he is also a Giant Squid, a member of the genus Architeuthis. It is the first specimen of this genus that we have at the museum. Because they are a deep water species, and...well...giant, Architeuthis are not often collected. Once we figure out the logistics of safely preserving and housing such a specimen in a public place, we hope that this squid can one day educate visitors while on exhibit at Powell Hall.

So with all these large specimens coming in and moving around, I'm sure you're wondering how our ethanol supply is holding up. Well, we had to place an order.

We tag-teamed this order with the fish range, so when we got the call from the delivery guy a group of us all rushed out to unload some ethanol. This picture, featuring four 55 gallon drums and a bevy of intrepid ethanol-moving-specialists, represents a quarter of that order (and 3/5 of those working on unloading it).

Some ranges have giant specimens that don't require ethanol. This giant totem pole was moved to a display location on the stairwell. Because it's very tall, solid wood, and moving to a somewhat awkward location, a Dickinson-wide call went out to recruit assistance.

A whole herd of us wheeled the totem pole outside on a series of carts, then controlled it down a steep hill and around to the back of the museum where we all lifted it and maneuvered it down the hall and into an upright position. Because I was actually helping, this picture is of the final tweaking of the totem pole into place. Nothing like risking life, limb, and artifacts to bring a group closer together.

I'll try to get back on a regular posting schedule. With Gustav on sabbatical you'd think that I'd have a lot more time on my hands, but it turns out that he still has email.

:) Mandy

Trip to Okinawa #2 -- How do you tell species apart? (what does the DNA say?)

2011-06-10T12:32:00.000-04:00

In the previous post, I introduced you to the species complex Holothuria edulis with the three players: the pink sausage, the gray one and the éclair. If one looks only at the ossicles, the character of choice to tell sea cucumber species apart, it seems like there is only one species. However, if one looks at the color of the animals and their ecology, it seems that the three players should be considered different species. Ideally, to distinguish species, it is good to have at least two independent characters that tell you the same story. Another important criterion to decide whether two individuals belong to the same species lies in whether they can produce fertile offspring. An efficient way to tell whether individuals can interbreed is to look at their DNA.

The gray form of Holothuria edulis. Cape Maeda, Okinawa, 15m. Photo by François Michonneau/FLMNH released under CC Atribution

How can a succession of A, T, C and G (the base pairs) help to distinguish between species? Just like you, each cell in the body of a sea cucumber contains DNA that it inherited from its parents when the sperm and the egg fused. To create a fully functional organism based on this single initial cell, the DNA has to be duplicated many times. Because each cell contains its own copy of DNA, the DNA is fully duplicated before each cell division. There are many mechanisms to ensure that the duplicated DNA is a perfect copy. However, on rare occasions, mistakes are made. DNA molecules are large and some parts are more important than others. In parts that are not very important, these mutations can accumulate without many consequences. In important parts, the slightest alteration can have important results. Because of these differences, not all parts of the DNA molecules evolve at the same speed. Some evolve so fast that they are unique to each individual and can be used in forensics to convict or acquit a suspect. Some change so little that they are almost identical across the entire tree of life.

Where mutations happen very rarely, if you find two individuals that share the same one in their DNA, they are more closely related than individuals that don't have this mistake. In other words, they share the same mistake because at some point in the past, their ancestors had the same parents. In animals cells, there is DNA in two compartments: the nucleus and the mitochondria. In the nucleus, each gene has two copies (one comes from mom, the other from dad) and the genes are arranged in long linear molecules: the chromosomes. The genes in the nucleus are responsible for most of the functions and appearance of the organism. Mitochondria are responsible for converting energy from sugars to make it available to the cells. In each mitochondrion, DNA is stored in a small single circular molecule and only contains genes that are useful to the mitochondrion. Unlike DNA in the nucleus, genes in the mitochondria are found in single copies: mitochondrial DNA from the parents don't mix, and only the mother contributes. These characteristics make the evolution of mitochondrial DNA easier to track and understand than nuclear DNA.

A typical animal cell showing the location of the nucleus and a mitochondrion. From NCBI.

Within the mitochondrial DNA, a gene has been widely used to help telling species apart. In most organisms, this gene accumulates mutations just at the right speed so that each species has a unique sequence. Because of this feature, the sequence of this gene can be considered as a "barcode". Just like each product at the supermarket has a unique sequence of numbers represented as a barcode, the sequence of this gene is unique to each species. However, contrary to the barcode that is found on all the packs of your favorite cookies, the barcode found in the mitochondrial DNA of a species is not perfectly identical from one individual to the next. Instead, out of the about 700 letters that make up the barcode, it is common to find a dozen of differences between the two sequences, but it's rare to find sequences that have more than 35 differences between two individuals of the same species.

Coming back to our species complex, what does the barcoding gene sequences have to say? The two most divergent barcode sequences that we have for the Holothuria edulis complex have about 20 differences, and they both belong to the pink sausage group. What is more surprising, is that the gray ones have exactly the same barcode sequence as some of the pink ones. The éclairs have their own unique sequence. However, they only have about 10 differences with some of the sequences from the pink ones.

If the barcode sequence was a perfect way to tell species apart, it would mean that the three color forms within this species complex are actually all the same species. However, it is not perfect. The three forms could actually be three good biological species that don't interbreed, and yet, their barcode sequence could say otherwise.

The first explanation to this pattern is these three form became different species very recently. Even when a species doesn't interbreed with another, it takes many generations for the barcode sequence to be completely unique and characteristic of this species. At first, when a pool of individuals start to diverge from the rest of the population, they will carry with them only a small sample of the barcode sequences that were characteristic of the ancestral population. Generation after generation, some of these sequences will go extinct (because the individuals carrying them didn't leave any descendants), and others will slowly accumulate mutations. Because these individuals don't interbreed with the rest of the population, these mutations will become characteristic of this new divergent species.

An alternative explanation could be that these three forms are actually different species but recently they swapped their mitochondrial DNA. In species that recently split, it can happen that the mechanisms preventing different species to interbreed fail. They can hybridize and in the process mix up their DNA, and in particular mitochondrial DNA. If it were the case, the signal shown by the barcode sequence could be misleading. The species may have stopped interbreeding a long time ago, but if they swapped their mitochondrial genes recently, the information from the barcode gene would be make us think that they belong to the same species.

The alternative to these hypotheses could be that the barcode gene is correct: the three forms are actually the same species and they just look different because they live in different habitats for instance.

Schematic reconstruction of what might be happening to the DNA of diverging populations. DNA is represented as a series of colored boxes. Each color represent one type of DNA base. A, B & C represent 3 lineages and each line correspond to a generation. At each generation an individual can leave one (or more) descendant with an identical copy of its DNA (white arrows), a descendant with a modified copy of its DNA (red arrow) or does not leave any descendants (crossed white arrows). At the fourth generation, lineages A & B cannot interbreed with C (represented by the dashed line). However, because of the recent history of their DNA, at the fourth and fifth generations B & C have more similar sequences than A. It would suggest, as in the first explanation, that B & C are more closely related despite the fact they cannot interbreed. Given enough time (generation 6 on the drawing) the lineages would reflect the correct relationships. If all the lineages could interbreed, DNA could still be exchanged. In this case B & C would seem closely related despite a history of reproductive isolation (as in the second explanation).

In the end, we are in a situation where color patterns and ecology say one thing (the three forms are different species) while ossicles and genetics suggest another (the three forms are the same species). Which is right? To understand what is happening in this particular case, in the next months, I am going to look at what nuclear genes have to say about it. Remember, mitochondrial genes only show a small part of the story as they are transferred only through the mothers. Nuclear genes, in particular those accumulating mutations faster than the barcode gene, could help explain what we observed in the mitochondrial DNA, and in turn, help us understand whether the pink sausage, the éclair and the gray one are the same species.

Trip to Okinawa #1 -- How do you tell species apart?

2011-05-29T13:07:00.001-04:00

I just got back from a trip to Okinawa. In the next week, I will report on the reason for my visit and some of the findings.

The island of Okinawa is part of the Ryukyu Islands, an archipelago in southern Japan.

For marine biologists, it is a very interesting place. First, the island is big enough to have lots of different types of habitats. Because many species are really picky about the place they call home, more kinds of habitats means more species are likely to be found. Second, Okinawa is at the northern limit of the Indo-West Pacific, the largest and most diverse marine biogeographic region.

The main goal of my visit was to collect specimens belonging to a species complex of sea cucumbers, and along the way compiling the list of all species of sea cucumbers that inhabit Okinawa.

The species complex I'm studying is called Holothuria edulis. In most areas of the Indo-Pacific, Holothuria edulis is easily identifiable. And for good reasons. It looks like a pink sausage that is burnt on one side. It prefers shallow places (less than 10 m / 30 ft) that are a little silty with few waves. That's why it is usually very common in lagoons and back-reefs. It's active both during the day and at night.

Holothuria edulis (the pink sausage). Photo by François Michonneau/FLMNH. CC.

In 2007, Mark O'Loughlin published with some other eminent sea cucumber biologists a new species that they named Holothuria nigralutea. The specimens were collected in Western Australia between 90 and 100 m (300 to 330 ft). At a first glance, it doesn't look very similar to the pink sausage Holothuria edulis. It is almost twice as long, it is light yellow with a series of black blotches on the dorsal side and a black stripe on the ventral side.

Holothuria nigralutea (the éclair). Dorsal view. Photo by François Michonneau/FLMNH. CC.

Holothuria nigralutea (the éclair). Ventral view. Photo by François Michonneau/FLMNH. CC.

To tell species apart, sea cucumber biologists like to look at ossicles. They are microscopic "bone"-like structures that are found in the skin of sea cucumbers. They can take all kinds of shapes and usually each species of sea cucumber is characterized by a unique set of ossicles. However, the ossicles of Holothuria nigralutea look very similar to the ones of Holothuria edulis.

Ossicles from Holothuria nigralutea (left) and Holothuria edulis (right). Fron O'Loughlin et al 2007.

So, last year while in Okinawa, we were very surprised and excited when one of our hosts, Daisuke Uyeno, brought us back 3 specimens of Holothuria nigralutea from his 45 m (145 ft) dive. Not only was it very far away from the location the species was first seen, but it was also much shallower. This considerably changed what we thought we knew about this species.

In Japan, biologists often give common names to species so that they can refer to them easily in Japanese. For Holothuria nigralutea the common name is "ekureanamako" or the éclair sea cucumber. Indeed, the black stripe on the ventral side of this species just looks like the delicious pastry.

An éclair by CraZeeCrafteeZ, on Flickr. CC.

After the pink sausage and the éclair, let me introduce you to the third player: the gray one. It likes the clear waters of the fore reefs exposed to waves. It is found usually below 10 m (30 ft) but not much deeper. It is a nocturnal beast. During the day it hides in crevices, but when the sun goes down it mops the reef frenetically (as much as a sea cucumber can be). It is also very easy to recognize: the dorsal side is taupe gray with white speckles while the ventral side is light beige. The gray one is found in some places of the Western Pacific: Micronesia, Cooks Islands, New Caledonia, Nauru and Okinawa. The gray one doesn't have a scientific name. Indeed, there is no physical difference other than the coloration that can tease this species apart from the pink Holothuria edulis.

The gray one. Photo by François Michonneau/FLMNH. CC.

To summarize we have three very different looking animals: the pink sausage, the éclair and the gray one. They are very different sizes: about 15 cm (6 in) for the pink one, 30 cm (12 in) for the gray one and 45 cm (18 in) for the éclair. They live in different places: shallow lagoons for the pink, exposed reef slopes for the gray one, and much deeper for the éclair. Yet, their anatomy is very similar and their ossicles are almost identical. So despite their apparent ecological differences, are they all the same species?

In the next post, we'll see what the DNA has to say about it.

Sources & Credits:
- P. Mark O’Loughlin, Gustav Paulay, Didier Vandenspiegel and Yves Samyn (2007). New Holothuria species from Australia (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Holothuriidae), with comments on the origin of deep and cool holothuriids. Memoirs of Museum Victoria. 64: 35-52. link | PDF
- All sea cucumber pictures by François Michonneau/FLMNH licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.
- Eclair picture by CraZeeCrafteeZ on Flickr licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND.

FUM 2 (FUM Rides Again)

2011-03-20T17:50:00.009-04:00

This past February 19th our division hosted the second annual Florida United Malacologists (FUM) meeting over at Powell Hall. You might remember that several of our ranks attended last year's meeting in Sanibel (although I erroneously called it "Florida Union of Malacologists"). The first sign that something was up could be seen in the range.

That table is completely devoid of clutter! But it isn't the Twilight Zone, we tidied the place up. Another sign that we're hosting a meeting can be seen here:

Giving a presentation to a room full of malacologists, however friendly they might be, can be a nerve-wracking experience, and we have to keep our strength up with some fortifying snacks. The line of food actually extended on behind me, cutting the photo off at the [2 trays of] bagels was merely an aesthetic choice.

There were 15 presentations from various shelled-mollusk enthusiasts. Jodi and I actually gave our talks on slugs (no shells!) which were kindly received nonetheless. Here is John Starmer in action giving his talk on work that he and Chris Meyer did on Rapa snails.

That's right, Gustav's long-lost grad student John Starmer had returned to us just in time to be roped into a presentation, but he totally nailed it. In fact, all the presentations were interesting as demonstrated by this audience reaction shot.

We also had a good time socializing over lunch.

And dinner. (I know, I should really stop writing posts when I'm hungry).

Looking forward to seeing you all again at next year's meeting!

:) Mandy

Leg 2: deeper, colder, and with 80% more jellyfish

2011-03-16T11:41:00.012-04:00

After a brief weather delay leg 2 commenced with 14 scientists on board and plans to explore the deeper northern waters of the Gulf. This included trawls up to 500 feet deep and dives up to 90 feet deep! We didn't know what to expect down there so François went into ninja mode.

Unfortunately for us, dive knives aren't an effective weapon against jellies. But once we made our way through smacks of them (that's right, a group of jellyfish is called a smack, I totally looked it up), the scenery on the bottom was actually quite nice.

We did a lot of dives at the Florida Middle Grounds where hard bottom substrate is covered with sponges, bryozoans, and soft corals. It was also really cold. Remember how I talked about leg one and how we were sooooo cold in 64 degree water? Well, this time my dive computer said 57. And my wetsuit wasn't any thicker. The cold is distracting, but so is all the cool stuff down there. For instance, check out this irregular urchin with his extra long spines.

And this anemone

Despite Rob's absence on this leg, we couldn't help but notice all the fish (even though we tried not to, they have a backbone and all).

Gustav also found a sea slug or two.

Back on the surface things were no less eventful. This is a picture of the frenzy on the deck after we return from a dive and everyone opens up their collecting bags to stabilize the animals that they have collected. The frenzy is also heightened by cold and usually meal anticipation.

Sand samples that we bring up are swirled in a giant bucket with water which is then sieved to extract animals that live in the sediment. Since polychaetes are commonly found using this method, Jenna is usually at the helm. In this instance she has recruited Antonio to help her.

After things are sorted on deck they are brought into the lab for processing. Although this picture makes it look fairly organized, don't be fooled. This picture captures an island of calm in the tempest of processing fever, which is also heightened by meal anticipation.

While in the lab one day busily anticipating the next meal we were also visited by a pod of dolphin. A few got pretty close to the boat.

All in all the trip was a great success and we found many animals that seem to be new records for the region; some might even be new to science. Thanks to all the visiting scientists for lending their expertise and thanks to the FIO crew for being the glue which holds the operation together, oil that keeps things running smoothly, and the hand that feeds us. For now, goodbye R/V Weatherbird II!

:) Mandy

They study what?

2011-03-09T20:51:00.007-05:00

That's right, despite what you may have heard and believe, sponges are animals too! On this trip we were lucky enough to have three sponge experts on board. Brendan, Anna, and Nicole from FSU had the daunting task of processing and identifying the sponges we brought on board. Here they are staring at a dredge full of sponges and possibly wondering why Poseidon is punishing/blessing them with 10 gazillion sponges to process.

I realize that talk of sponges causes many people to react like this:

Even amongst invert lovers like us, sponges often remain a mystery, and I confess that while I might be able to slap a family or generic level identification on an arthropod or mollusc, the best I can do for sponges is "Porifera" (the phylum of all sponges, essentially identifying them as "sponge"). But both vertebrate and invertebrate marine biologists can agree that sponges are cool. Not only do they filter water in impressive volume and velocity (while still being sessile and lacking musclature to do so), in many of the areas we explored sponges provide most of the structure on the sea floor and are therefore important habitat. A single sponge can reveal a whole community of animals. Here is Rob slicing up a sponge looking for gobies (fish) which live within.

In addition to fish, sponges also host lots and lots of invertebrates, including this Synalpheus. If only Art had been there.

We also found this large and awesome nudibranch, Hypselodoris picta, which dines on sponges. Surpringly, even after seeing a sea slug this cool, Rob still insists on working on fish. I know, we couldn't believe it either.

Even trying to identify invertebrates from so many diverse phyla, many of the animals we study still have a body plan that is somewhat recognizable. They have characters based on feeding structures, tentacles, reproductive structures, color pattern, shape, claws. They often have something resembling a head or even a face. While color and shape play a role in sponge identification, most sponge characters are much more cryptic. Please forgive the blurriness of this picture, it was night and it was very choppy.

In addition to all the information we record about specimen location, habitat, depth, and so forth, the sponge team also records data on texture, compressibility, color, shape, and even smell. They take pictures underwater because many of these characters can change once the sponge is brought to the surface. When they get back to their lab at FSU they will also examine the microscopic spicules that many sponges have that are often an important character for sponge identification. These same spicules can also be a severe irritant often requiring sponge workers to wear gloves (and avoid rubbing their eyes, as I found out the hard way on a previous trip). While our work area was an explosion of marine life and field equipment that often spilled over into the two square feet of counter space that we generously allotted to Rob to work on fish, their work area looked like this, with many tiny cups filled with drying pieces of sponge:

Despite all these obstacles to studying sponges, look how happy Brendan and Anna are, possibly because they're about to go diving, possibly because no matter how many sponges they find on a dive they can't possibly bring back the work load that was pulled up in that trawl, and possibly because they know that when they get back it will be time for dinner!

No matter why they do it, we are grateful that they do. Not only are sponges important from a marine biologist's perspective, but their many toxic chemicals make them prime candidates for potential new medicines. Thanks sponge team!

:) Mandy

Bon Voyage!

2011-03-05T22:27:00.011-05:00

From March 4th through the 14th several representatives from the FLMNH, along with scientists from many other institutions, will be sailing the high seas on the R/V Weatherbird II of the Florida Institute of Oceanography. And by "high seas" I mean the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. We've been doing a lot of diving, but since I'm one of the divers (and therefore not wielding my camera) I hope you enjoy this picture of our dive gear.

We have had several dives a day for collecting. So far, they have usually been around 40-60 feet, with the temperature hovering around 64 degrees. Please take a minute to let that last number sink in. That's 64 degrees Fahrenheit. But while some of us are diving, others on the surface claim that they are actually too warm. I find that hard to believe, but Rob, the collections manager of the fish range at the museum is seen here wearing short sleeves while he tries to net a pelican.

Ok, so Rob is not actually trying to net the pelican, he's after floating clumps of sargassum and the fish hidden within. The pelican is probably after the same thing. In addition to the fish team composed of Rob and the pelican, we also have a sponge team, an amphipod soloist, a bryozoan soloist, and Nat, Jenna, Gustav, and I on general invert duty. There are 12 of us in total so that means a lot of specimens to sort and process back in the lab and a lot of data to keep track of.

So you'd better believe that at the end of the day we are ready for some hard-earned rest. Here's a picture of us at night.

I'm sorry, did I say rest? I meant trawl. The trawl was missing a part the first night, but we managed to get a few in tonight, and I have no doubt that we'll be making up for lost time. The trawl brings up a variety of fish as well as inverts, including the biggest sea star I have ever seen!

We've only just begun. I'll keep you posted!

:) Mandy

National Geographic article about the Biocode project

2011-02-24T13:59:00.000-05:00

National geographic just published online a series of articles and photos illustrating the Biocode project. This initiative seeks to document all the species living on Moorea, a small island in French Polynesia. Our lab is involved with a big chunk of this diversity as we are processing all the marine invertebrates. The originality of this project is not only its comprehensiveness but also that we are archiving a unique DNA identifier for each species (the barcode).

This is really useful for instance to figure out what a fish eats. By sequencing the DNA found in its gut, and by matching it against the database of known DNA sequences, it becomes possible to determine what is its favorite food.

Another application is for identifying larvae. For many marine animals, life starts as a larva which might look totally different from the adult. However, both the larva and the adult share the same DNA so if we know the DNA of the adult, we can figure out how the larva looks like. Compare the larva and the adult for this species of crab (Xanthias lamarcki). Hsiu, a post-doc in our lab, works on this project.

To learn more, you can read the full article, browse the photo gallery or explore the infinite photo.

Goodbye Sarah!

2010-12-31T08:49:00.012-05:00

I should have posted an homage to Sarah long ago. This fall she left us to begin culinary school in DC, and we've missed her ever since. Listen to this music as you peruse the pictures below. You might want to wait for the chorus to get the full effect.

Here is Sarah on our Bellows trip to the keys, making sure that we don't kill ourselves by toppling over the stern in an invertebrate-induced frenzy. Sarah and I were co-chiefs on that research cruise, although Sarah was a little more chief and I was a little more co. Goodness knows what we would have done without her!

Sarah was invaluable in the field, willing to dive in and get wet (as she's preparing to do in this photo),

or buckle down to do some lab work. Here she is doing some data entry in Moorea. Although she chose a different chair than I did in the Biocode lab, the focused gaze developed after hours in front of the computer deciphering field notes is one with which I am all too familiar.

In addition, Sarah was brave in the face of danger. In this photo she is being attacked by a clam, but seems surprisingly calm, even cheerful. Nerves of steel!

We also called upon Sarah back at HQ. "Hey Sarah," we'd say, "remember all those specimens you collected and/or processed in the field? They're not going to rehouse themselves."

In between trips to the field, rehousing, cataloging, photo matching, Geneiousing, DNA-extracting, subsampling, photographing, reorganizing, ethanol-procuring, supply-ordering, loan-processing and so forth, Sarah managed to find time for an sea urchin project in which she used genetic data and morphology to elucidate the evolutionary changes in spine shape and pattern in a group of sea urchins. In this photo she's scrutinizing pedicellariae under the microscope.

Sarah was great as a scientist, it was an added bonus that she was also great as a chef. Our potluck lunches and parties were much augmented due to her skills in the kitchen, but our gain also turned out to be our loss. We miss Sarah, but we hope she'll come visit and bring all her new culinary school knowledge with her. Maybe we'll have a potluck....

:) Mandy

Danger! Science ahead!

2010-11-23T14:47:00.004-05:00

Oh the things we do for science! In our pursuit of documenting biodiversity we often throw caution to the wind and end up a little worse for the wear. Getting bashed in the surf on a coral reef or getting mauled by thorny plants is all in a days work, and frankly helps us feel a little more like Indiana Jones and a little less like the nerds we are. I failed to get a picture of the really impressive bruise I received while diving, but I didn't miss the opportunity to photograph John's legs after he came down from the mountain.

Some of the equipment we use can also be cause for consternation. The battery for the underwater vacuum had a little melting issue. So we did what any normal person would do and went to the hardware store, busted out a soldering kit and set about to make the repairs to an 18 volt battery. Jenna and Gary undertook this project with great success as previous vacuum footage can attest.

Some of the animals are also unappreciative of our attention. After carving two very large, very parasitic snails out of this sea cucumber's body wall, he repaid me by unleashing a torrent of Cuverian tubercles. If you are unfortunate enough to get tangled in these sticky strings, you will be picking them off for days to come. You're welcome Bohadschia argus, I hope you enjoy your new snail-free existence.

And then there are the animals who mean you no harm, but can still get your heart pumping if you're lucky enough to swim with them and aren't too busy installing ARMS to notice their proximity.

While always mindful of safety, it's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of discovery!

:) Mandy

Will climb mountains for land snails

2010-11-14T18:33:00.002-05:00

Our intrepid terrestrial malacologist, Collections Manager John Slapcinsky, recently returned from climbing the highest peak on Moorea- the mountain Tohiea.

Much of the climb is near-vertical, but pays off in the form of an isolated patch of forest, largely protected from the invasive species that dominate the lowlands of this and most other tropical islands. This area is high enough to be in the path of many clouds, so the vegetation is moist and can be considered "cloud forest".

The view is spectacular, but so are the relict populations of snails that are now gone from much of the island below. One family of land snails, the Partulidae, was believed to be extinct until small relict populations were located at locations similar to this one.

In the late sixties an African landsnail Achatina fulica was introduced to the island. This species was perceived as a threat to agribusiness, and a biological control entity was sought. In order to control this species, as second snail, the predator Euglandina rosea, was imported from Florida. Euglandina had a rapid and terrible impact on the snails of Moorea- and bypassed the Achatina. The genus of native tree-snail, Partula, which was common, diverse, culturally important, and the subject of decades of population research was chased across the mountain side in a loosing battle. The genus was declared extinct in the wild in 1988.

Our lab is happy to confirm reports that small populations of these snails still exist in the wild. Though they may never be as common as they were, at least they are still around.

-Seabird

Vacuuming the Reef

2010-11-14T01:26:00.004-05:00

For quite some time, our group has been experimenting with using Vacuum sampling to get small, cryptic parts of the fauna off of coral reef rubble. The most recent, and successful, design is based on a sampler that Dr. Richard Pyle designed for his deep water work.
http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/staff/pylerichard.html

We've had some trouble gettting the required parts through airline security, as Gustav has experienced first hand... but now it is all here and working! In the video below, Jenna and Mandy demonstrate its set up and use.

The device, though strange looking, has proven effective at getting at some spectacular animals that we have not previously collected using other methods, such as the snail below, a "witches' hat" from a family of snails that are parasitic on echinoderms (Eulimidae, Bacula morisyuichiroi).

-Sea

Lab Work

2010-11-06T14:12:00.012-04:00

I know what you're thinking, "did you really go to a tropical paradise to toil in the hot sun and crystal water, and labor up idyllic forested slopes? Don't you ever take a break for some refreshing lab work, replete with the soothing glare of fluorescent lights, the gentle clink of scientific glassware, and the warm radiance of sterile surfaces?" Of course we do, except for sterile part. We're field biologists, the chemistry is upstairs.

I've already mentioned some of the work we do in the lab for processing specimens. First comes the sorting. Since this is year three of the project we really want to focus on getting things that are new and interesting, so people pick through the mass samples (sand sample, leaf litter, etc.) and pull out the animals, which are handed off to an expert to determine what qualifies . Usually one uses a microscope for this, but some larger stuff can be seen with the naked eye. Allow John to demonstrate.

Even an expert IDer needs help every once in a while. For this purpose we have photo field guides that we have compiled over the past two years, comprised of photos of specimens we have already collected. This also help ensure that we are collecting new animals, and not something we have collected many times in the past.

You can see one of the guides open next to Charlotte's microscope. That might be another one in her lap. The experts can also help by IDing animals in the guide whose identity has remained a mystery to us.

The specimens are also photographed, especially those that will be subsampled and will no longer be intact. We have several set-ups for this, including two microscope systems, but the basic system that we used for marine animals is a clear aquarium we built elevated off a black background.

After photography most of the animals are subsampled for DNA extraction. For this, a little snippet of tissue is placed in a 96 well plate which goes into the DNA-extracting-robot. Here, Jenna and Gary are about to start loading the plate in Jenna's hands (Jenna not pictured).

There's also a lot of data entry, as all the information that goes with each specimen (photo, subsample, location, identification, habitat, etc.) must be recorded for the Biocode database as well as for cataloging back at the museum. The lab work is not glamorous, but when we discover something new and exciting it often happens here. Please enjoy this reenactment.

Now that our numbers have swelled to 12, I'll try and keep up with the posting. Science waits for no one!

:) Mandy

Underwater collecting techniques

2010-11-01T01:02:00.008-04:00

Each collecting trip we try and take advantage of our numbers by employing a diverse array of sampling techniques. Everyone has their favored technique, usually dictated by the type of animal they are interested in, and the method most likely to yield that animal. I've been doing a lot of rubble brushing which entails picking a suitable rock from the bottom and brushing off the underside into a net. When I get out of the water at the end I empty the net into a plastic bag with water and bring it back to the lab for sorting.

This is me getting a nice, small rock from the bottom. Since I was manning this operation solo, I had three things to hold: the rock, the brush, and the net. A quick calculation reveals that that my two hands are somewhat inadequate. When the water is shallower this doesn't present a problem as I can kneel or stand (for breathing) and prop the rock (for brushing). At this depth I have to bring the rock to the surface to maneuver it (you know, to breathe), but it's hard to stay afloat while brushing and holding a boulder.

Art is a pro with the yabby pump. This device uses suction to draw animals out of burrows. The plunger is pulled quickly and the contents are emptied into a sieve. The sand falls through and whatever animal that was inhabiting that burrow is left in the sieve. Pumping is more difficult in the water because you don't have a nice solid surface with ample gravity to brace against. In this picture Sea is manning the pump and Art is holding the sieve on the lookout for interesting animals.

Art's particular interest is the shrimp that make many of the burrows, but there are often many commensals that come up in the pump as well. Like this cool gastropod (snail) which we're calling the Starship Enterprise, but which some call Phenacolepas.

We've also been doing a lot of sand sieving in our quest for micromolluscs. Since John is one of the resident mollusc guys he's being doing a lot of the sieving. He swims along the bottom pushing the sieve and scraping off the first few centimeters of sand. Then he roots through the sieve to see what he's found. As with the brushing, the contents of the sieve will be emptied into a plastic bag at the end of the dive.

The duration of each sieve push is limited by depth and buoyancy, and once again, when snorkeling, deeper is harder.

We've also been getting a lot of rubble samples now that Charlotte is here with her penchant for polychaet worms. This entails hauling around bags of rocks and coral rubble which will be rooted through back at the lab.

In gathering rocks and rubble there's a lot of sticking of hands into nooks and crannies, but one must be vigilant.

Can you see the eel? It's a dangerous job, but we're just the team to undertake it!

:) Mandy

Waterfall Hike

2010-10-30T12:12:00.006-04:00

We've had a couple new arrivals, and starting today our numbers are going to start increasing by leaps and bounds. This means a lot more trips to the field, with lots of different sampling techniques going on at once. And that means a lot more time in the lab for processing: anethetizing, photographing, subsampling, preserving. It's going to start getting crowded in here.

For one of our trips, Vetea (who lives and works here) took John, Yasunori, and I to look for terrestrial and freshwater molluscs in the area around Afareaitu Waterfall and the stream it feeds. The foliage was very dense in places, and we hiked around for about 4 hours fighting our way uphill through the vegetation.

But we did eventually make it to the waterfall.

Where we did some collecting around the pool at the base. Yasunori has a special interest in the nerite group of freshwater snails. He even found one that he had described as a species eight years ago.

While we were poking around the waterfall several more groups came and went, which was surprising considering how much of an effort it took us to get there. Then we realized there was a trail, which we weren't too proud to take on the way back to the car. Taking the trail down did nothing to diminish my sense of smug superiority over those who had taken the trail both ways!

So far every collecting trip has yielded new species for the biocode project, and my collecting skills are improving daily. Things are starting to get busy!

:) Mandy

My first Moorea snorkel

2010-10-27T19:49:00.005-04:00

So on our second day we decided to get wet. Our focus was going to be micro organisms, mostly molluscs, so we were going to be doing brushing and sieving and sediment sampling in addition to general hand collecting. We headed out to a mud/silt flat with occasional coral bommies. Here is John looking for a suitable rock to flip and brush.

So, maybe I'll do some sand fanning, see if I can't find any...holy crap! Look at the size of that sea cucumber!

Wow, these guys are thick on the ground, I can see why Gustav likes it here. Ok, so, sand fanning. Maybe I can find some small snails or shrimp. Hey, is that an urchin!

It is an urchin! Those are pretty big too. They are crowded into every crevice in the coral. I can't believe how much coral is on this mud flat, and so close to shore. Looks like the fish like it too.

The colors are amazing! There are even picasso triggers (not pictured), my favorite! I wonder if this algae growth is hiding any...christmas tree worms!

I mean micro molluscs. I wonder if that algae is hiding any micro molluscs. Hmmm, so far nothing. Except a baby giant clam!

Is that a blue one!

This is pretty much how my snorkel went. I eventually began scouring the rocks along the jetty, and was excited to find several micro molluscs! Which turned out to be hermit crabs. So, there's a lot to see in Moorea and my first snorkel was full of new and exciting stuff. Next time I vow to do better. Maybe I'll help John with the brushing.

:) Mandy

We're in Moorea!

2010-10-26T12:48:00.010-04:00

This month begins the third and final installment of the three-year Moorea Biocode project. When our flight arrived yesterday at 5:30 am it was already full daylight. I can tell this will be something to get used to. The first wave to arrive was me, John, and Art. Art has been here before so he showed us the ropes. One of the first things we did was set up the lab (did you think I was going to say sleep, or eat, or shower...so did I).

Over the course of the next seven weeks we will be joined but twenty researchers coming and going as their time allows. We will be relying on their expertise to help us identify the animals in the groups that haven't been as thoroughly documented in years past. One of the holes in our knowledge is in phylum Mollusca, and one of the experts, Yasunori Kano, has already arrived to help out. So what does a group of scientists do after 13+ hours of travel, little to no sleep, inconsistently scheduled meals, and already having shown our dedication by setting up our stuff in the lab? We go collecting of course!

"Hmmm," you're thinking, "I thought you said you were in Moorea, you know, beaches, palm trees, coral reefs, all that jazz?" How right you are, but for our first collecting foray we decided to hit up some freshwater habitat which hasn't been as extensively sampled. John also found some interesting land snails in a tree on the edge of the stream, and Yasunori took a look around the estuary where the stream empties into the ocean and found some interesting animals as well. The estuarine area was full of these crabs:

But, we didn't collect any, they are so large and abundant that it's impossible that they were missed in the previous two years. After collecting we headed down to the grocery store to stock up on breakfast and lunch food. Sometime in the store I hit my wall and entered a quasi-zombie state. We put the food away and hit the lab for a while and then staggered off to our bungalows.

Only it was night. And now, please enjoy a picture of that jazz you were asking about earlier. We'll hit this up next.

:) Mandy

Invertebrates in the News will resume shortly meanwhile...

2010-10-04T15:03:00.000-04:00

You can read about Triactis producta at the Invertebrate of the month. Andrea Crowther wrote about this sea anemone and its association with the pom-pom crabs Lybia.

Photo: Lybia tessellata, Réunion Island by François Michonneau/FLMNH CC 3.0

Super Rewind: Keys Marine Lab 2010

2010-10-03T20:39:00.005-04:00

I suppose I can't dive right into this post without acknowledging the extraordinary tardiness of it's presentation. Yes, I'm really lame, this is something we can all agree on. Now that that's out of the way, lets talk about our experience at the Keys Marine Lab (KML) in the Florida Keys after the Bioblitz in Biscayne Bay.

First off, the facility is great, there are dry labs, a wet lab, water tables (for keeping things alive), ample dorm space, and many other sciencey amenities including a boat complete with captain/dive master for diving or snorkeling. In the morning we would usually split into two groups one going out on the boat and the other doing shore-based collecting. Here are Gustav and Nat discussing strategy with the captain.

As far at the boat activities went, this strategy involved snorkeling, diving, and plankton tows. Because this was my first opportunity to use my AAUS Science Diver certification for actual collecting in the field I was pretty excited. I was also pretty inept. We'd all pile back into the boat after the air started running low, then while we were waiting for Gustav, who enters a presumably anaerobic state involving extremely low air consumption while diving, we would compare our finds of the dive. This Petrochirus diogenes was one of them.

I invariably lacked the collection skills of the more experienced among us (i.e. nearly everyone else) but I never came back completely empty-handed. And not only because my partner/dive buddy was the intrepid Sarah who had developed mad critter-spotting skills during her time in Moorea. Here she is on a snorkel excursion collecting some sargassum to be examined for critters.

The examining part looks like this.

Ok, maybe Hsiu is examining. The wet lab with its water tables and work space was where the animals were brought and sorted. This was also where sargassum was picked through and chunks of coral rubble were cracked open to reveal the creatures within. I think Nat is taking something from the water table back to the dry lab to be processed. The dry lab was a hive of activity. As earlier at Bioblitz, and as is usual in general in the field, the animals are anesthitized, photographed, and subsampled. There is also someone manning the computer and entering the animals into a spreadsheet along with the location they were found and their taxonomic ID. Here are Gustav and Anne DuPont consulting over an ID. Jenna is subsampling, and Francois is at the photo station. Since I don't see anyone next to Jenna where the computer person usually sat, I'm going to assume that it was me, who paused ever-so-briefly to take this picture.

After a long day of collecting and processing we'd haul our carcasses up to the dorm for dinner. Carole even made us some brownies to keep our energy and spirits high. Don't George, John, and Anne look revitalized?

In all, it was a very fun and productive trip. As we aim to increase our knowledge of the Florida fauna, we will hopefully be spending more time at KML in the future.

(Thanks to Carole Marshall and Anne DuPont for the crab picture and the brownie picture!)

Rewind: BioBlitz 2010

2010-06-20T18:01:00.001-04:00

Back in April/May our lab participated in the National Geographic BioBlitz down in Biscayne Bay. BioBlitz is a 24 hour biodiversity survey (from noon to noon), where we document as many species as possible. Groups of scientists lead groups of science enthusiasts on short forays to see what we can find using various collecting methods. We were involved in both the marine and terrestrial invertebrate surveys. There was a base of operations at Convoy Point, but we were involved with the survey based out of Elliot Key. While the tour groups would come and go throughout both days we the scientists spent two action packed nights camping on Elliot Key. So what does it look like when 12 scientists go camping? Something like this.

I realize that's it hard to really grasp the scale of supply-mountain, but we and our gear filled the deck of our the boat that ferried us to the island. And it was all deck. It was a landing-craft designed for transporting vehicles.

The eating/sciencing portion of the excursion was conducted on one side of the island, and the sleeping portion was conducted on the other. To travel between them one had to go through The Gauntlet.

I know, it's so scenic and tranquil. We too were lulled into a false sense of security, but a few steps into The Guantlet and we realized why the woman on the boat had been so insistent about bug spray.

What appears to be a diseased limb swiftly traveling down the road to amputation is actually a buffet of culinary delights from the perspective of the aggressive and bountiful mosquito and no-see-um populations of the island.

So how did we avoid the bugs (besides employing hazardous level of DEET)? By getting in the water! In this picture Jenna and Sam are showing a school group how to use a yabby pump and sieve to collect critters from burrows in the sediment. I realize you can't see the yabby pump in this picture, but the good news is I'm not holding out for a career in photojournalism.

Unfortunately I also don't have any pictures of John braving the wooded areas searching for land snails. Except for my sprints through The Gauntlet necessitated by some desperate need (food, sleep, more bug spray), I avoided the woods whenever possible.

Throughout the day, groups would come in from collecting trips and some animals would be displayed in trays on outside tables so that people could admire them. A group of us would man the tables to tell people about what they were looking at. For instance, dig this lobster.

Now dig Jenna, Nat, Gustav, and François showing this group of children a thing or two about biodiversity.

That tent in the background was the headquarters for this operation. Many animals were admired and released, but many also ended up in the tent where they were anesthetized. Then they were photographed, subsampled, and preserved to go back with us to the museum. Sarah is photographing, while Julie and Hsiu are subsampling.

Having a physical specimen, accompanied by a live photo and DNA sequence, allow diversity information to be preserved in such a way that others can use it for their own research.

All in all it was a lot of work and a lot of fun, and we expanded our knowledge and collections of Florida's biodiversity, but we weren't done yet. After BioBlitzing most of us continued taking our show on the road and headed down to the Keys Marine Lab on Long Key. More on that in another post.

Sea cucumber workshop in Guam

2010-06-11T22:12:00.000-04:00

Part of the lab is currently in Guam because of sea cucumbers.

In the context of the PEET project, we brought together 15 sea cucumber specialists and students -- from 10 countries -- in Guam to share knowledge about field and lab techniques for taxonomic studies of our favorite echinoderm group. We are now half-way through the workshop (it started on June 7th) and we have been very busy.

Our days are filled with field trips where we collect sea cucumbers in their habitats, time in the lab where we dissect the animals collected and look at their ossicles and time in the classroom where sea cucumbers specialists give lectures and students present their research.

We have been really successful in the field and found several species that haven't been recorded from Guam before, and even maybe a couple of new species. There are two main reasons for these new records.

First, it highlights the progress that the PEET project has made since it started. By visiting museum collections to find type specimens, by collecting sea cucumbers in many places to understand morphological variation in species and by sequencing all this freshly collected material, we have a better idea of the characters that are useful to identify sea cucumber species and we have refined our understanding of some enigmatic species. For instance, there is a genus of sea cucumber called Labidodemas that live among coral rubble in lagoons. In the past, most Labidodemas were assigned to a species called semperianum. The reason is simple, most Labidodemas species look almost alike: they are whitish, have long tube feet on the ventral side and a dark red/brown coloration around the anterior and posterior ends. However, by looking at their ossicles (microscopic skeletal elements found in their skin), it turns out that it is fairly easy to identify the other species of this genus. During the workshop, we thus recorded for the first time in Guam the species called Labidodemas pertinax. By looking carefully at the live specimen, we are now able to tell the two species apart.

The image at the top is Labidodemas semperianum and the one at the bottom is Labidodemas pertinax. Can you see the difference in the color of the tentacles and the tube feet? (click on the images to enlarge)

The other reason that we are finding new records and new species in Guam, is because it's the first time there are so many people looking for sea cucumbers at the same time. It's amazing what 15 pairs of trained eyes can see when they are specifically looking for sea cucumbers.

I'm sure we'll catch many more interesting things before the end of the workshop and I'll keep you posted!

Invertebrates in the News #5 (follow up)

2010-05-24T18:18:00.000-04:00

Last week, I told you that Terry Gosliner was blogging about his field trip in the Philippines where he is looking for nudibranchs (sea slugs).

Today, there is a new post about his adventures.

Update: Here are his final posts that wrap-up his expedition.

Invertebrates in the News #6 - DNA reveals the complex life cycle of the stalked jellyfishes

2010-05-20T17:44:00.000-04:00

If I say jellyfish, you probably picture a Frisbee-like animal with long tentacles that swims gracefully in an open ocean.

However, there is a group of jellyfishes (the Stauromedusae) that do things a little differently. First, they don't swim but live attached to the bottom with a stalk, hence their common name: the stalked jellyfishes.

Second, they are thought to have a "simple" life cycle. Most jellyfishes
go through several stages before they reach adulthood. The typical
jellyfish starts life as a small polyp (something that looks like a sea anemone) attached to the ocean floor. This polyp buds small medusae (jellyfishes) that grow until they reach sexual maturity. At this point, they release gametes into the ocean. After fertilization, the egg forms a planula larva which will settle on the bottom to give rise to a new polyp.

In stalked jellyfishes, things were assumed to be a little different, but simple: the planula attaches to the bottom and metamorphoses into a polyp (so far everything is normal). The top of the polyp metamorphoses into something that looks like a jellyfish while the bottom part stays the same and still looks like a polyp; hence a stalked jellyfish. The only problem with this story is that it is based on only a few observations based on few species, and it's hard to know if all the Stauromedusae do the same thing.

Stauromedusae (stalked jellyfish) - Haliclystus antarcticus

There is another problem: how can you tell if the two stages of the life cycle that look very different belong to the same species? In the best case, you can observe the full life cycle in the field or in the lab, but it is not always possible to do so. In other cases, you can only observe part of the life cycle.

In 1996, Gerhard Jarms & Henry Tieman published a paper where they described a new species of hydrozoan polyps that live on clam shells of the Antarctic that they named Microhydrula limpsicola. They kept the animals in the lab for 4 years, and only observed asexual reproduction by frustules (larvae produced asexually).

In a recent paper, Lucilia Miranda and her colleagues demonstrated that Microhydrula limpsicola is just a stage in the life history of the stalked jellyfish Haliclystus antarcticus. They were able to connect these two life stages by discovering that the DNA of the polyps (what was thought to be M. limpsicola) and the stalked jellyfish (H. antarcticus) were identical.

The life cycle of the stalked jellyfishes is thus much more complicated than we thought.

Furthermore, Microhydrula limpsicola was not the only one of its kind. There are two other species that were thought to belong to this family (the Microhydrulidae). It will now be interesting to determine if they are also stages of other species of stalked jellyfishes.

Links

Miranda LS, Collins AG, Marques AC (2010) Molecules Clarify a Cnidarian Life Cycle – The “Hydrozoan” Microhydrula limopsicola Is an Early Life Stage of the Staurozoan Haliclystus antarcticus. PLoS ONE 5(4): e10182. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010182
Jarms G & Tiemann H (1996) On a new hydropolyp without tentacles, Microhydrula limopsicola n. sp., epibiotic on bivalve shells from the Antarctic. Sci. Mar. 60(1): 109-115 http://www.icm.csic.es/scimar/index.php/secId/6/IdArt/2742/

Credits

Photo of jellyfish (top) François Michonneau. Lizard Island, February 2009. CC 3.0
Photo of H. antarcticus and drawing of life cycle by Miranda et al 2010. CC 3.0
Photo of the close up of a stauromedusa by Minette Layne CC 2.0

Invertebrates in the News #5

2010-05-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

Currently, the New York Times is hosting a blog series entitled "Scientists at work, notes from the field".

Today, Terry Gosliner from the California Academy of Sciences writes about new species of nudibranchs he found in the Philippines.

You can read his blog posts here.

Images by Terry Gosliner

Jenna and Mandy on a Boat (Part 2 of 2): Science at Sea

2010-04-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

Now let's do some science! As I mentioned in the previous post. Jenna and I were on the trawl shift from 8-noon and 8-midnight. During each 4 hour shift there were between 3 and 5 trawls. Each trawl had 10 minutes of bottom time and several minutes going down and coming up. A trawl is basically a giant funnel shaped net with wooden doors at the front that keep the net open as it is being pulled through the water along the ocean (or whatever body of water) floor. I can't tell you too much about the physics of it, but when you pull the net up, you untie the narrow end of the funnel and dump out the critters. This is when the biology part begins. As we sorted through the critters on deck the fish could go together in one or more giant fish bucket(s), but the invertebrates were sorted by level of aggressiveness with swimming crabs and stomatopods (mantis shrimp) being separated from more delicate animals like squid.

If you're studying fish, most of your animals ended up nicely grouped at the end of the net near the closure; if you're studying invertebrates then many of your animals have limbs for grabbing, and are probably scattered throughout the net. In the picture below Jenna and are are going through the net to remove animals that didn't make it through to the tied off end, usually starfish and crabs.

Anamar needed specific information for each trawl including total wet weight, number of species, number of individuals of each species, and measurements of some molluscs and arthropods. Starfish were a common theme in every trawl, as were juvenile Penaeid shrimp (also known as eatin' shrimp). In one trawl Jenna had the privilege of counting 453 Penaeids! Animals that we were keeping for the museum went into relaxants, which were different depending on the critter in question.

Most of those animals were photographed and had a tissue subsample taken. Below are some of the lab photos we took of an anemone and a worm with a portion of the shell-covered tube he constructed.

We kept a running illustration of the "Catch of the Day," one for invertebrates and one for fish. Jenna had the invertebrate illustration well in hand, but Jason (the fish expert on board) wasn't confident in his artistic abilities so Jenna volunteered to give the fish illustration a go. It looks accurate, based on the ID, but we're not fish taxonomists so there may be a few errors.

One of our Catches of the Day was this huge Pleuroploca gigantea. It is the largest species of marine snail in this hemisphere. The ruler in the picture with him is one foot long.

Not to be outdone, during the last trawl of the trip the fish team pulled up this giant stingray, which is also the record-holding species for the Atlantic.

He was so big that they couldn't weigh him using the winch and the largest scale available on the boat. All we know for sure is that he weighs more than 100 lbs. He was so big that the crew all gathered at the back deck to get a glimpse of him, although since it was April Fool's Day some people didn't believe the report when they heard it. In contrast to my usual liberal application of random gender assignments to the animals we caught, we actually know that this guy was a male due to his claspers. The females get even larger!

So after our evening shift we usually stuck around the lab and fished up the processing of the specimens for the museum: relaxing, photographing, subsampling, fixing. After our morning shift we pitched in with some of the other activities. During the 12-8pm shift there were several different sampling methods being employed. One of these was a bottom grab which got two different treatments. One sample was homogenized for chemical analysis, and one was sieved and bagged to be sent to another institution. Jenna and I did some sieving to give the usual sievers a dinner break.

We would also take turns catching up on sleep and manning the radio so we could root through the leftovers from the chemistry sample. We found some cool stuff in there including lots of worms and a cool sea biscuit.

Also during this time they would deploy the CTD. I'm sure its full name is very descriptive of its function, and might be useful for me to know now. In any case it took water measurements such as salinity, temperature, depth, current. It can also take water samples, but we didn't take any on this trip.

A few people also did some diving to get a direct observation of the bottom conditions in certain areas. Here they are waiting for the smaller boat to be set in the water to take them to the dive site.

They also had a cool camera thing that they could send down to the bottom that would take video footage of animals within the sediment using refraction, but it's a sensitive piece of equipment and opted not to work this time, although much of the last day was spent staring at it in an attempt to bend its functionality to our will. This picture was taken when we had nearly accepted defeat.

So we had a great time and saw a lot of really interesting stuff! We also found some animals that are new to the collection. Thanks to Anamar and the EPA for including us (hat tip to Jason). Hopefully we can get in on another trip in the future. In the group shot below that's not the OSV Bold in the background; it's just a boat that happened to be at the same dock.

:) Mandy

Jenna and Mandy on a Boat (Part 1 of 2): Life at Sea

2010-04-02T18:37:00.000-04:00

So this week (Sunday through Friday) Jenna and I accompanied a team of scientists from Anamar, an environmental consulting firm in Gainesville, who had been hired by the EPA to do a survey for a future site for dredge dump materials. Part two of this post series will describe the work we did, but first I want to describe our life at sea on the OSV Bold.

Any sailor knows that safety is of the utmost importance on a boat. If something hits the fan it's important to know that you can remain calm, get to your muster station, and look good doing it. Enter the Gumby Suit:

The Gumby Suit (or Immersion Suit if you're a stickler) is designed to keep you alive if you are so unfortunate as to find yourself in the water for any length of time. I personally felt like I was drowning in the suit itself and was grateful they didn't feel the need to add water for this particular exercise.

In addition to the safety briefing, during our first day at sea we also got our shift assignments. Jenna and I were on the trawl team and our shift was from 8-12 both a.m. and p.m., additionally chipping in when extra help was needed or when people needed relieving at meal times which were from 7-8, 11:30-12:30, and 4:30-5:30. Of course food was available in the galley and break room 24 hours a day as Jenna and I quickly discovered.

Several crew members told us about the ice cream available in the freezer. We thanked them, but didn't feel the need to tell them that we had discovered at least one of the ice cream stashes within a few hours of our arrival.

Also within a few hours of our arrival (or rather our departure from the dock)...seasickness. I did not capture on film the image of me vomiting over the side of the boat (collective sigh of relief), but afterwards I lay down for a few hours and was fit as a fiddle for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately my bout of seasickness did cause me to miss one meal, but I more than made up for it over the course of the trip. Throughout the day Jenna and I made frequent trips to the galley for what we termed "fortifying cookies," candy, coffee, and water. This room really was central to our seafaring life. The chef was amazing and we didn't want her to feel unappreciated.

In fact, Jenna and I probably spent more time in the galley and the wet lab (where we did most of our work) than we did in this room.

And it had nothing to do with the fact that over the course of the week the room became filled with clothes covered in fish scales and invertebrate goo, and the cryptically named "vomit sweatshirt." We were just really busy! The room was actually very nice and pretty spacious for a ship cabin. To the left of the above picture there was even a desk where we could catch up on some informative reading.

As you can see Jenna and I took our new roles as sailors very seriously. I'm thinking of getting a subscription to WorkBoat to add a touch of the sea to my landlubbing existence. I think that the rest of the crew could tell how committed we were, because after a brief tutorial...

They let Jenna and I drive the boat! Although I think the engineers in particular were unimpressed with our driving. During my turn at the helm they called up to the bridge to make sure that everything was ok and that the chief mate (who was on shift at the time) hadn't been hijacked or drinking on the job.

Also during our last days we did manage to grab a few moments of downtime on the steel beach on the bridge deck. In this next shot, the part of Jenna and I will be played by our echidna traveling companion.

We had a great time, but we also worked hard. Next post I'll talk about the work that we and the other scientists conducted during the trip. In hindsight, maybe I should have posted about the work part first, but I was just trying to set the stage. I promise we did work Gustav!!

:) Mandy

Invertebrates in the news #4 - Speciation in reef hermit crabs

2010-03-30T11:17:00.000-04:00

The journal Science has a section entitled "Editor's choice" where they feature recent papers that caught their attention. This week, they chose to highlight a paper written by Machel and Gustav that looks at the patterns of speciation in the genus of hermit crab Calcinus.

Calcinus lineapropodus (photo by Gustav Paulay)

By combining information about the genealogical relationships of 56 species (almost all the species known in this genus as well as 9 undescribed species) and information about the color of the species and where they live, they were able to discover some interesting facts about the evolution of this group.

Closely related species have similar shapes but they can have very different color patterns. This means that color patterns evolve rapidly and that they can be used to tease species apart. This also suggests that the hermit crabs themselves use these color patterns to recognize the members of their own species. So, the apparition of new color patterns could lead to new species. To illustrate this rapid evolution in color patterns, compare these closely related species that live most of the time on branching corals: Calcinus minutus (from Guam), Calcinus rosaceus (from Oman) and Calcinus nitidus (from Moorea).

Calcinus minutus from Guam (photo by Gustav Paulay), Calcinus rosaceus (photo by Machel Malay), Calcinus nitidus (photo by Gustav Paulay)

Isolated islands and archipelagos such as Hawaii have several endemic species of Calcinus, which suggests that the formation of new species (speciation) happened on the edges of their geographical ranges.

Most species of Calcinus are found in oceanic areas in particular in the Western Pacific and in Polynesia. This is different from what is known for other marine invertebrates. Indeed, in corals, fishes, and various groups of mollusks, most of the diversity is found in a more continental area called the "coral triangle" (from northern Australia to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea). To illustrate this difference, compare the 2 maps below. The first one shows the distribution of the diversity for the hermit crabs of the genus Calcinus whereas the map on the bottom is the same kind of map for the cowries. The unusual diversity pattern found in Calcinus highlights the importance of the ecological and historical processes characterizing each group of organism that have led to their current geographical distribution.

Distribution of the species richness of the genus Calcinus. Contours represent 4, 10, 13 and 17 species. (from Malay & Paulay 2010)

Distribution of the species richness of cowries. Orange to red colors represent high number of species (above 64), green to yellow colors represent intermediate number of species (between 40 to 64), light blue to dark blue represent low number of species (between 1 and 40). (from Paulay & Meyer 2006)

Links:

Editor's choice. Science. 327 (26 March 2010): http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol327/issue5973/twil.dtl#327/5973/1555-c
Malay MC, Paulay G. 2010. Peripatric Speciation Drives Diversification and Distributional Pattern of Reef Hermit Crabs (Decapoda: Diogenidae: Calcinus). Evolution. 64-3:634-662. DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00848.x
Paulay G, Meyer C. Dispersal and divergence across the greatest ocean region : Do larvae matter ? Integrative and Comparative Biology. 2006;46(3):269-281. DOI: 10.1093/icb/icj027

AAUS Training

2010-03-23T12:20:00.001-04:00

In order to dive under the auspices of the University of Florida, divers must undergo training to become AAUS certified Scientific Divers. Art, François, and Nat all needed this training for their future field endeavors. In order to keep your status current you must complete 12 dives a year. Jenna and I had fallen short (way short) so we needed to re-checkout with Cheryl, the Dive Safety Officer (DSO) of UF, so we tagged along on some of their dives one day.

Here are the three trainees (Nartçois) preparing to descend to 100 feet. We were diving in a spring that day and the water was quite cold, so they're all rocking a hood.

Although AAUS certification is not a NAUI-card-having designation of diver, there are several aspects of the training, one of which is to become a Rescue Diver. Below, Jenna plays the role of a tired diver and François gives her a hand with a fin push.

Although it it seems pretty clear from this next picture that François is attempting to drown Nat, he is actually practicing getting them both out of dive gear while towing him to the exit and administering rescue breathing.

Below is a short video of Nat performing the same exercise on Art, either saving his life or drowning him. You be the judge.

Also key to scientific diver training are navigational skills. Here Art and Nat prepare to navigate an underwater square at a depth of 30-40 feet using a compass for direction and a pre-determined number of fin-kicks as the distance.

You know what dive training means...more fieldwork! And hopefully some more blog posts from the field, replete with showy animal photos and calendar-worthy scenery.

:) Mandy

...but we've been really busy

2010-03-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

I know it's been way too long since my last update, but just wait till you see all that we've had going on and I hope all will be forgiven.

The Shrimp Mafia has disbanded with Ivan and Sammy returning to their respective countries of origin leaving Art to describe new species on his own. But not to worry, Magali Honey (Maggie) is visiting and will be here for a few weeks. She came just in time, I think that by this point the hotel we use has started factoring our visitors into their monthly budget. Here are Machel and Maggie bonding over talk of barnacles and sea cucumbers.

Also during the month of February, prospective grad students came to visit the department. One of the women who came to interview with our (Gustav's) lab is Christine Ewers. I didn't capture her on film this time (I was sick, another reason for the lack of posts, do you forgive me yet?) but she has been on a R/V Bellows field trip with us in the past. Here are she and Julie patching up a trawl net.

Another new arrival who is here to stay (at least for a few years) is Hsiu-Chin Lin. The newest member of the team, she is joining us a post-doc. She has a lot of genetic expertise that we are anxious to add to our collective knowledge.

In addition to all the arrivals and departures. We also participated in the 2010 UF Marine Biology Symposium. Many of us presented talks or posters of our various and sundry research interests. My data were a mess and needed a lot of time and attention to polish up enough in time to present at the symposium. Other things that I might have been meaning to do (i.e. posting to this blog) may or may not have fallen to the wayside as a consequence, but I'm sure you understand. At the conference, the cuke team swept the undergraduate awards with Julie, Laura, and J.D. all winning prizes. Here is a glimpse of Julie's first place presentation with some nice ossicle pictures. Try and soak in the knowledge.

So in addition the the grant-ending other-work-neglecting catch-up to do, we now have our symposium-readiness other-work-neglecting catch-up to do. Sarah has been doing a lot of cataloging and label matching. Here she is shelving a freshly labeled box of something. This is the shelving where we keep the wet (ethanol preserved) collection. It's not as creepy as the lighting makes it look. You should see the herpetology collection!

Jenna has also been tackling some label matching, but it seems like there's always someone wanting a Geneious tutorial. We've been getting back so much sequence data from the Smithsonian that everyone wants to get to work on building some trees for their study group. One of the latest petitioners is Sea.

Fred has also begun work on his Thailand collection and has spent some time in the range this week sorting through trays of land snails that's he's collected to prepare them for cataloging.

Also doing land snail work, Chelsey and John have been working on the many, many (many, many) lots from Madagascar. Chelsey may be employed full time over in the shark range, but she keeps coming back home to Invert Zoo, feeling the pull of the Acavidae and their messy taxonomy, and possibly the snack drawer and its ever-changing bounty.

I'm also pleased to report that I've made serious inroads into the desk blockade that has been constructed around me. I would say that things are returning to normal, but I realize that I really have no standard for comparison. What can I say, we're a happenin' joint.

:) Mandy

Invertebrates in the news #3 - A new tree of life for the Arthropods

2010-02-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

You may not have heard of the word "arthropod" but you are certainly familiar with at least some members of this group: the insects. While insects make arthropods the most diverse phylum, arthropods also contains many other groups. Arthropods can be tiny (fleas) or fairly large (lobsters). They live in a variety of habitats: from the polar waters (krill) to the top of the trees (beetles) through arid deserts (scorpions).

On top of this diversity, arthropods are also economically important. For instance, mosquitoes carry the parasite which causes malaria, bees pollinate many of the fruits we eat, and the fruit fly is a model organism for genetic and medical research. Understanding how different groups of arthropods are related helps understand their evolution.

Scientists have been trying for a long time to understand how the different groups of arthropods are related to each other using morphological characters. This is not an easy task because arthropods are an ancient group. They appeared some 550 million years ago and all the extant groups were formed at least 200 million years ago. This is plenty of time to accumulate morphological differences which may mask the true relationships among extant groups.

This week, the journal Nature published a study that used an unprecedented amount of information found in DNA to understand how the major groups of arthropods are related. The results elucidate some long-debated issues about the relationships among various groups of arthropods. I highlight here two main findings.

Simplified Arthropod phylogeny based on Regier et al (2010)

First, the authors confirm the results of previous DNA-based studies showing that the myriapods (the group which includes the centipedes and the millipedes) are not directly related to insects, and thus, that these two groups invaded land independently. It has been proposed that myriapods and insects were closely related because they both used special organs to breathe air. Furthermore, the myriapods are not directly related to the Chelicerata (spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, mites, ticks) but belong to the Mandibulata (all the other arthropods).

A pycnogonid from Lizard Island, Australia

Second, the closest relatives to the insects are a group of rare arthropods that the authors grouped under the new name of Xenocarida ("strange shrimps"). This new group unites two classes of arthropods that have only been recently described. In particular, the Remipedia were described in the 1980's and are only known from a few places (the Bahamas, the Canary Islands, Mexico and Cuba) where they live in caves. This illustrates the issue of what is called "taxon sampling" when scientists try to infer the relationships among organisms. If the authors didn't include these groups, the conclusions of their study would have been different, and some other arthropod group would have been mistaken for being the closest relatives of insects. Furthermore, it also illustrates the importance of habitat conservation and field work to preserve and discover species that can help unraveling the tree of life.

Link to the study:

Regier et al, 2010. Arthropod relationships revealed by phylogenomic analysis of nuclear protein-coding sequences. Nature.

New Arrivals

2010-02-09T08:49:00.000-05:00

After the grant report was due, we all heaved a sigh of relief but didn't stop to rest on our laurels. Instead we hit the ground running. Sarah and Jenna pitched in to help me take care of some of the stuff on and around my desk, mostly the ever-growing piles of re-IDs. Thanks goodness for their help...

Am I laughing or crying behind subsample mountian? It could go either way. Oh the humanity! But we finished the grant right? Why is my pile of re-IDs still growing? Pictured below is why.

Art has abandoned the Nart consortium and joined the Shrimp Mafia. He has recruited Sammy DeGrave and Ivan Marin to work with him on shrimp identifying. They will be visiting us for several weeks.

Remember that little trip to Heron Island that Rob, Sea, and François went on? Well those specimens (seven buckets worth) arrived from Australia to make the week more interesting. Since it was so long in transit without ethanol it needed our immediate attention. Jenna did the lion's share of the unpacking and rehousing.

But I (along with Sarah, not pictured--don't worry, I make up for it later) totally helped.

There was so much material that we had to make multiple trips to the offsite ethanol storage facility (hereafter known as the Ethanarium) to refill our supply back at the range. Here is Sarah multitasking by refilling our ethanol carboy and getting a tricep workout.

Sarah has also been doing some work in the lab with Jodi, a grad student in Entomology/Nemotology who is doing some land snail work with John. Even though we send much of our DNA work to the Smithsonian, for our more immediate and smaller-scale needs we can still do extractions here. Sarah has been showing her our procedures.

Plus, we also rested on our laurels. In the picture below you can see the celebratory feast we prepared and a portion of the celebrants (from right to left): John, Nat, Gustav, Sarah, Sea, Mika. But what's that poking out from behind the tree?

Puppies! It was also Mookie's birthday on Feb 1st. End of grant and puppy birthday, what better reason to feast! Gustav, Sarah, and I all brought our pups: Puka, Motu, and Mookie.

Now back to work!

:) Mandy

Invertebrates in the news #2 - David Liittschwager's images in National Geographic

2010-02-05T13:07:00.000-05:00

For this second edition of invertebrates in the news, I chose to follow up on a previous post. In early December, Seabird reported on David Liittschwager's visit in Moorea. As announced at the time, the pictures he took during his visit are published in the February issue of National Geographic.

The photographs illustrate a feature article written by E. O. Wilson that emphasizes how important -- and yet little known -- are the small organisms that live in the soil, in the sea, around us. To unravel some of this diversity, David Liitschwager went to six different ecosystems around the globe, and carried with him a green metal-frame cube. At each location, he observed and took pictures of all the organisms he found in his one cubic foot cube. For each location, there is also a video showing how he proceeded.

If so many forms of life can fit into one cubic foot, it means that in order to fully appreciate the diversity of life one must also look closely for the smaller organisms.

Grant-ed

2010-02-01T12:53:00.000-05:00

We (meaning Gustav) had a grant report due on January 31st so we have spent the past few weeks making sure that we had dotted and crossed our i's and t's respectively. A grant report is often required at the end the term of a grant, and it is our opportunity to show the funding agency how the money was spent and how we kept all the promises that we outlined in the original grant application. In our case this called for some last minute plating just to make extra sure that we would have as many as we promised. Lots of people got in on the act. Jenna is a veteran plater, and you've already seen her mad skills immortalized in digital format. Less accustomed to plating, but still lending much-needed manpower to the task, is the Nat/Art consortium which we have named Nart. Nart tag-teamed several arthropod plates.

Because mollusc shells are sometimes broken (either accidentally or by necessity) to get a subsample of the animal's tissue, we photograph the specimen before sampling so we have a photo voucher of the intact animal. Sarah is the speediest photographer in the west so she often manned the photo station.

While some of us spent countless hours plating, it wasn't the only activity in the range. It's a new semester so Gustav put out the call, "CUKE TEAM! ASSEMBLLLLLLLE!" is what I'm sure the email said. And assemble they did. Here they are meeting to discuss strategy. I'm pretty sure that the strategy involves a lot of ossicle slide preparation on the part of Julie, Laura, and JD.

Several members of our lab also went to the Florida Union of Malacologists meeting in Sanibel this past weekend. John, Gustav, Fred, Jim, and Chelsey all presented talks. They are also featured in the group photo, along with several people whom you might recognize from their visits to the museum.

In the face of the plating challenge, I have been neglecting my desk for the past week. Emails with work requests have piled up as well as boxes of vials and supsample tubes to be cataloged or renamed in the database. This is what faced me on February 1st.

To those who would be tempted to suggest that my desk always looks like this I would argue that flinging accusations around doesn't empty my desk any faster, and if you're not part of the solution then you're probably part of the problem. Even though February has just begun, we have quite a month lined up. Stay tuned.

:) Mandy

Invertebrates in the news #1 - Bdelloid rotifers & Corynactis viridis

2010-01-29T13:26:00.000-05:00

To keep you entertained about invertebrates when we are not in the field, I will write regularly about invertebrates that made the news recently. On the menu today: a summary of a story published today about rotifers and a video of a tiny sea anemone.

How do bdelloid rotifers do without sex?

There are less than 1% of all animal species that don't use sex at all to reproduce. And, for most of them it seems that they gave it up fairly recently. This suggests that, in the long run, species that do not use sex to reproduce end up extinct. By not reproducing sexually, species accumulate deleterious mutations, and cannot exchange mutations that could help them to adapt to changes in their environment -- such as new diseases.

Bdelloid rotifers are an exception, as it seems that they have been reproducing strictly asexually for tens of millions of years. A study published today in the journal Science by Wilson & Sherman sheds some light on the cause of this exception.

Bdelloid rotifers are microscopic animals that live in any kind of moist habitat all around the globe. In addition to their mode of reproduction, bdelloid rotifers are also exceptional in their ability to stay alive out of the water for up to 9 years (at any of their life stages). This ability might be one of the factors explaining why they do well without sex.

The authors of the study showed that staying out of the water for a few weeks reduced drastically the number of individuals killed by a pathogenic fungus. By staying dry for an extended period of time, they can get rid of the the fungus and reduce the selective pressure that these pathogens impose to these asexual rotifers.

More info on the ScienceNOW website and in the original paper.

Video of Corynactis viridis

Have a look at this video of this small sea anemone feeding on plankton. Note how it can change the shape of its tentacles and its mouth (in the center). This video has been filmed under fluorescent light and is played 1200 times faster.

'Corynactis viridis' from MORPHOLOGIC on Vimeo.

Welcome 2010

2010-01-15T14:17:00.000-05:00

New year, new semester, and we are all back in Gainesville. And we have already had visitors. Carole Marshall is here looking at our collection of specimens from the Lake Worth/Peanut Island area. She has been diligently photographing shells from our dry collection. We have over 3500 from that area so she has had her work cut out for her.

Harry Lee came back to reprise his role of expert IDer, this time applying his skills to the snail family Terebridae.

We realized that with these new IDs, this will probably be the next group slated for subsampling and plating. A little recon revealed that many of these specimens are small and/or tightly retracted. I think next time we might suggest to Gustav a nice slug family that we should subsample. Dorididae anyone? Well, small and retracted isn't so bad right, at least they're not bivalves, those might present a real challenge. Oh right...

We've been doing the bivalves. I was manning the photo station yesterday when Nat saw me photographing the lovely Lioconcha pictured above. What does its pattern remind you of? If you said "a phylogeny" then you might need to spend a little less time with Geneious (I'm looking at you Nat).

It's true, we're still hooked on Geneious. Below, Jenna is giving Nate an adamant lesson, but they both look pleased with his Geneious-learning acumen.

Now that the semester has started again, the Cuke Team will be reassembled. Julie was previously pictured doing some solo work on ossicle slides, but now she will have company. You last saw JD working with Jenna at Geneious, but that was merely in order to add to his skills as a Cuke Team member. Here he and Laura cuke it up, preparing still more ossicle slides of the sea cucumber family Synaptidae.

Also, Sarah is back from Moorea, but she just can't seem to let go. She has spent much of her time lately compiling the field data into a spreadsheet that can be imported into the Biocode database. The massive collection effort in Moorea is part of the large, three-year Biocode project which aims to document the entire diversity of the island. All the data must be in exactly the right format and Sarah has spent countless hours staring at error messages trying to make it so. She seems so happy, it must be just like being back in the islands!

Art just got back from Ecuador, but I can tell that he was missing work while he was on vacation because he dove right back into drawing Alpheid details. Art has several new species that's he's in the process of describing for publication. It must be keeping him pretty busy because the packages arriving from Amazon.com have slowed to a trickle.

New for 2010, division uniform? Either that or Jenna, Sarah, and I are psychic. There's no other possible explanation for the teal shirts we all decided to wear on the same day this week.

Happy New Year everyone!

:) Mandy

Goodbye Derek!

2010-01-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

I realize that it has been far too long since the last HQ update but in my defense, we have only recently returned from break, and our computers underwent some IT voodoo that rendered them problematic for a few days. Only one short week into the new year and we lost Derek. We knew it was coming, and we are excited for him about his internship on Dauphin Island, but we'll miss him nonetheless. Today, in his honor, we listened to the internet radio station he created and his favorite song "Party in the USA." Feel free to play "It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday" while you look at the pictures below.

We briefly shared Derek with Invert Paleo, but even before then Derek dove in to help them with their tray delivery.

Ok, so Derek is wearing the same sweater in all the pictures below. They weren't all taken on the same day, it's just cold in the range! Here he is sorting through an incoming collection, or is it specimens to plate? I can't be sure.

Pictured below is part of Derek's adventure IDing portunid crabs. He looks happy, this one must have keyed out nicely.

And this is from his last day, still diligently working on the photographs of the specimens that will be sent away for DNA sequencing.

I did not get any pictures of the goodbye potluck that we had, maybe because I was too busy eating. We might have lost Derek, but the others of us who were scattered far and wide (Moorea, Ecuador, Oregon, China) have begun making their way back to us. François is the last holdout, extending his holiday until the last possible minute, and maybe just a little beyond. I know they have calendars in France, François! 2010 here we come!

Plate-tacular-stravaganza

2009-12-18T14:41:00.000-05:00

These past few weeks have been very plate-centric. Jenna and Derek have be photographing and subsampling bivalves from the ethanol collections. Nat has dipped his toes into the arthropods, and I have been hammering away at the echinoderm tissues pulled from the cryofreezer. The details are hazy, but I'm pretty sure I dreamed the other night about affixing the small adhesive labels to the subsample vials. In the picture below Jenna's purple gloves demonstrate her dedication to both sterile subsample conditions and a festive work environment. Ok, the purple ones were on sale last time we bought gloves.

So why isn't Nat wearing purple gloves? Somewhere he must have found a stash of the older latex gloves, but you can see his dedication to office-festiveness in the classy pink fingernail polish at his workstation. We use this to denote which specimens have been subsampled. It looks like Nat has chosen "A Dozen Rosas," I usually opt for "Fuchsia Fever."

Machel also joined us in the lab. She and Nat must have heard that I was thinking of heading up to the grad student offices to try and get a photo of them in their natural habitat for the blog. François escaped back to France for the holidays before I had fully committed to the expedition.

Plate-frenzy and ID frenzy go hand in hand. Below, John is identifying some bivalves to add to the queue of specimens to be sampled. He and Gustav have been making sure we don't get bored, run out of things to do, or see anything other than bivalves seared into our retinas when we close our eyes.

That's right, Gustav is back from Moorea (again), and you know what that means...buckets! Buckets and buckets of baggies and vials of specimens that need to be rehoused and stabilized in ethanol. I got a picture of a portion of it.

Processing the specimens fixed in ethanol goes fairly smoothly, but the ones which are formalin fixed require a little extra attention since it is a more hazardous material. Like a responsible scientist, Nat took a few bags over to the fume hood in the herpetology range to safely drain the formalin and replace it with ethanol. I hope you're looking Department of Environmental Health and Safety!

Processing buckets means we use hundreds and hundreds of small wet vials. We have many sizes, but these are the most popular. Just to give you an idea, we buy several cases at a time, several times a year. Each case contains 750 vials. In this next picture Derek is replenishing the lid stash.

At our last discussion-group meeting of the year (pictured below), Nat gave a practice presentation of a talk he will be giving in January on Myxozoa. "Myxozoans," you're thinking, "are those cnidarians like corals and jellyfish or more closely related to the bilateria such as worms?" Good questions, Nat's master's research brings us a few steps closer to the answers we seek.

Happy Holidays!

:) Mandy

Tonna perdix eating Stichopus sp.

2009-12-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

Not many animals are known to eat sea cucumbers. There is a good reason. Most of them have chemicals in their body, which probably doesn't taste too good but more importantly may intoxicate the potential predators.

Humans have found a way to deal with these toxins. In the preparation of the bêche-de-mer, sea cucumbers are boiled for a long time which breaks down these chemicals.

If toxicity is a good way to avoid generalist predators, other animals have evolved to become specialists and can deal with the cocktail of toxins found in the skin and organs of sea cucumbers. In coral reefs, among the specialist predators, Tonna perdix is known to feed regularly on sea cucumbers, and in particular, on the species of the genus Stichopus.

After finding a Tonna perdix during a reef walk on Heron Island, I decided to keep it in a tank hoping to observe its feeding behavior. A few days later, Rob brought me back some Stichopus (that I can't identify to the species level) and decided to put it in the tank with the Tonna perdix. Before the Stichopus even touched the bottom of the tank, the Tonna perdix became really active. After a few minutes crawling around the tank, Tonna perdix used its proboscis to detach its prey from the wall of the tank, and in just a few seconds, the gastropod extended its proboscis around the sea cucumber swallowing it whole. Holly Heiniger had her camera with her to record this.

Sea cucumbers have also evolved ways to escape predation. In particular, Stichopus can shed its body wall to only leave pieces of it to the predator. However, in this case, the attack was so fast that the sea cucumber didn't seem to have any time to escape.

Visiting Artist: David Liittschwager

2009-12-07T21:01:00.000-05:00

The Moorea Biocode project is currently hosting the photographer David Liittschwager (http://www.liittschwager.com/). His amazing works have been showcased in the book "Archipelago: Portraits of Life in the World's Most Remote Island Sanctuary", which he co-authored with Susan Middleton. He has a few projects he is working on that document coral reef organisms, so he is collaborating with the Marine Invertebrate Group of the Biocode project and the Invertebrate Zoology department of the Florida Museum of Natural History. He has spent the last week or so taking the most interesting and beautiful creatures from our collections into a lab-turned-studio and coming out with intensely detailed portraits of a fauna rarely seen, let alone celebrated.

One of his projects will be coming out in the February issue of National Geographic.

It has been a treat having him around, lending an artistic perspective to a world view dominated by scientists.

-Seabird

New Genus!

2009-12-05T23:00:00.000-05:00

Sarah McPherson has become our expert in collecting the hidden organisms in the vast areas of sand around Moorea. The habitat is one that is frequently overlooked, and turns up all manner of surprises. You will see her patiently fanning, stirring up huge clouds of sediment, and revealing one pale tan critter after another. After today's dive she came back with a collecting bag full of creatures new for the project including one inconspicuus, transparent, Alpheid shrimp. Art Anker, a post doc in the Paulay lab and one of the few world experts in the identification of shrimp in this group, was on hand to announce that Sarah had found a very special shrimp. Not just a new species, but a new genus! He also promised to name it after her.

-Seabird

Packing up, moving on...

2009-12-04T15:53:00.000-05:00

Rob has a distinctive packing style

Our three weeks in Australia have ended, so we are packing up all of the specimens, and shipping them back to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Packing, itself, is a long drawn out affair- all the containters need to be drained of Ethanol, then packaged together with other specimens, heatsealed into a plastic bag, and then packaged into small barrels. With over 2000 specimens, it takes HOURS. But if it means that they make it back to the museum safely, it is time well spent.

The trip was interesting in terms of what was on the island, and what wasn't. As expected, rarity was the rule, and some groups that we expected to be common were all but absent. Unlike many places in the Indo-Pacific, the coral genus Pocillopora was largely absent from the area- and certainly not a reef dominant group, as it is in Moorea. The same could be said of many types of Sea Cucumbers. Parasitism of echinoderms and crustaceans was common.

The large scale questions remain: What drives these patterns of diversity? Why is this place different from others?

-Seabird

Preparations, Celebrations, and Geneious Fever

2009-12-04T08:58:00.001-05:00

Another busy week! François has returned to us from Heron Island and Gustav has left us to return to Moorea (he might be on a plane right now). While he was here he entered into an ID frenzy. The first group he tackled was the gall crabs, Cryptochiridae, which live in coral. It's hard to detect the frenzy in the picture below, but it is there. And yes, that is Jenna in the background still toiling away at Geneious. Lest you think she is a Geneious slave, I'll have you know that not only has her tether recently been lengthened, but we also unchained her completely last weekend so she could spend Thanksgiving with her family.

Don't be alarmed, but Geneious Fever has spread from Jenna and JD to the office I share with John. Because his back is to me, I can't see the glassy-eyed stare that is characteristic of Geneious Fever, but the beautifully aligned and colorful DNA sequences on his computer screen give away his condition.

We've also spent some time gathering supplies for Gustav to take with him back to Moorea. A sampling is in the photo below.

Now I realize that to the untrained eye, this assortment of equipment might look vaguely suspicious, but don't worry, the scientific eye can discern that this stuff looks...ok it looks hilariously suspicious, that's why we took a picture of it! But Gustav should have no trouble at the airport, not only does he have museum credentials, but he also has a beard and an accent. In reality, what looks like three sticks of dynamite is actually a battery for an underwater vacuum and the white cylinder is its case. The bags of expensive looking white powder contain the salt magnesium chloride. This substance is used to relax mollusks before preserving them. Relaxing them has a dual purpose, it acts like an anesthetic so it is more humane than just plopping them in ethanol, and it causes them to release their body out of their shell. Some gastropods and most bivalves can be difficult to preserve without relaxing because they seal themselves in their shell and end up rotting because the ethanol can't penetrate.

In the picture below Derek is working on the construction of the battery case. It has been quite a project, and although Derek did most, if not all, of the actual construction of the case, I have a proprietary sense of pride and feel I really contributed to it's construction since I wielded the pcard that made the purchasing of the components possible.

This week the GRR (Genetic Resources Repository) division of the musuem celebrated its 20,000th accession, so they threw a party to celebrate. The GRR is responsible for managing the tissue subsamples for the museum division's wet collections. Our division felt especially proud since we contributed over 54% of the subsamples and the 20,000th lot was an isopod from our collection. Chelsey, Derek, and I posed with the cryofreezer...

...but not before stuffing our faces with cake! While Pam cut the cake Lorena opened the freezer for us to see. This picture was taken after the freezer was open for a while and so it didn't capture the huge billow of steam when the freezer is first opened. Very dramatic!

Now we'll get back to work on the next 20,000!

:) Mandy

Museum Happenings

2009-11-23T08:56:00.001-05:00

It's been a relatively busy week at HQ. In addition to lending field support to our agents throughout the globe (Australia, New Zealand, Moorea) with supplies and data entry, we kept up a brisk pace of other activities as well.

In the picture below, Jenna is spreading the Geneious love. She is now so skilled in the program that she is sharing her knowledge with others. JD is hanging on her every word. Also, Julie is delighted by ossicles, the calcarious particles in the skin of sea cucumbers. She is preparing slides so the ossicles can be viewed under a microcscope. They are often a diagnostic character in distinguishing species.

John is taking a break from the land snails of Madagascar to ID some snails that were given to us from marine lakes in the Pacific. Not to worry, the 10,000 lots of land snails that recently arrived from Madagascar will not let themselves be forgotten. They have numbers on their side and know that John needs them for his PhD work.

Before we put tissue samples in plates to be sent off and sequenced, it is helpful to have an accurate ID on the specimen, so Gustav called for backup. Harry Lee is an expert malacologist whom Gustav recruited to help us ID to species some of the snail families in our collection.

Jada and Anthony are plating some some her Moorea specimens for sequencing. Not pictured, the actual plates. I think they're hidden behind a bag of subsample vials.

This was Walter's highly anticipated vermetid ID-stravaganza. As you can see it was well attended, even though it was postponed until Thursday due to schedule conflicts. These worm snails can be easily confused, not only between species, but with other families of snails such as the Turritellidae, and even with actual worms, a completely different phylum (Annelida). We are now armed with the necessary arsenal to fend off such mis-IDs.

We have a shortened week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. After gorging ourselves on turkey we'll be ready to spring back into action. Or if not spring, at least sluggishly haul ourselves up to our desks.

:) Mandy

Dis-ARMS-ing

2009-11-20T23:14:00.000-05:00

For the last few years our lab has been involved in putting ARMS on reefs. These are Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures. The idea was to come up with a standardized unit to measure reef biodiversity. Each unit consists of PVC plates, spacers, and some wire mesh. The whole thing is anchored to the reef, and left to sit and get settled for a full year.

With Creefs back at Heron island for another season of biodiversity surveying, it was time to pull out the ARMS that had been placed last year. The video is of Shawn removing an ARMS from the bottom, and carefully boxing it and carrying it to the surface.

Taking them apart and sampling them fully is time intensive- and quite a few of the species we have gotten so far have not come from any other method of sampling, including the "Muppet Crab" featured at the bottom of the post.

-Seabird

The ARMS is carefully released from it's box....

The layers are unbolted

The mesh layer is on top.

Then several PVC layers

Everything is brushed carefully and all obvious creatures and plants are removed.

Everything is carefully rinsed and the rinse-water strained for small organisms

And then the specimens are carefully sorted to species in the lab.

And the treasures appear!

Large Octopus

2009-11-18T19:06:00.001-05:00

There is no doubt about it. Octopus are amazing creatures. We encountered a large one on the reef the other day and I got a short video of it. Unlike most I've encountered it was not terribly shy, and stayed in view for more than a half hour. At about 5 feet across, size may have had something to do with it. The video gives a good sense as to how rapidly they can change color and texture to match the surrounding environment, or to send a signal. What it doesn't portray as well is the amount of -for lack of better words- personality that these animals have.

Enjoy. I sure did.

-Seabird

Meanwhile, back at HQ...

2009-11-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

...work continues apace. With Gustav and John out of the country (as well as Sea, Sarah, Art and François) we set our noses to the grindstone and held down the fort with a skeleton crew. We did an admirable job, but now Gustav and John are back so we canceled Pajama Thursdays, received our commendations, and abandoned the tiller. But of course they didn't return empty handed. John was touring musuems in Europe photographing holotypes for his (and Chelsey's) research on land snails. "Type" specimens are the individual specimens on which species descriptions are based. The picture below is of the holotype of Ampelita souliana, which John photographed while in Paris.

Take a look at these pictures and see if you can tell who went to Paris with John and who went to France at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival.

Gustav also returned bearing gifts. In addition to several hundred specimens from Moorea (a small sampling of what we will face in December when the whole expedition heads back to Gainesville), Gustav also brought some of his field notes for us to enter into a spreadsheet. We had already begun this task on Sarah's behalf so we knew what we were facing.

If you can read this you're either a huge invert-nerd, a cryptologist, or Gustav. Don't limit yourself, you might be more than one.

A couple more pictures of what we've been up to: Jenna is becoming a genius at Geneious, a software program for aligning DNA sequences.

We aim to sequence to bulk of the species in our ethanol preserved collection in the coming months.

Also, Derek has begun tackling the crab family Portunidae, the swimming crabs. Using a key (and the assistance of Gustav) he has been assigning the correct species name to the specimens which have either been unidentified (or identified only to family level) or misidentified in the past.

Walter Kelly has also been busy identifying our collection of vermetid snails (family Vermetidae) and will be giving a presentation later today which will turn us all into expert vermetid IDers. Ok, maybe it'll take more than a day, but we can dream can't we, and we'll still have Walter around for a while to show us how it's done.

I hope all you field agents are remembering the sunscreen as you languish on various tropical isles!

:) Mandy

Farming on the reef

2009-11-12T16:58:00.000-05:00

There are a few animals that farm. Humans, and ants on land, but what about the oceans? Jada-Simone White (http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/malacology/white.htm) has been studying the details of one marine farming relationship- that of the "farmerfish" Stegastes nigricans (a type of damselfish) which actively cultivates an algal "turf farm".

Yesterday I had the opportunity to observe another type of marine farm. Throughout the Pacific Ocean, you can often see odd, short crevasses in large heads of coral. Sometimes they appear to have been carved in- like Petroglyphs.

These burrows are made by an Alpheid shrimp. If you look carefully, you can see that the edges of the burrow are lined with a hydroid, while the walls of the crevasse are covered in an algae, carefully cultivated by the shrimp from holes at the bottom.

The shrimp in this group typically have rather short limbs. In this case though, the secondary chela is very, very long and flexible, to be able to tend to the garden from the saftey of it's holes.

Most of the time you can't see how this works very well, but yesterday, I found a garden that was exposed on one side. I'm posting a video below, along with a little map. The two pink arrows are the first and last access points the shrimp has to its garden. The green arrow is the hole to watch in the video. Starting around 12 seconds into the vid, you can see an arm flash out of the hole, grab some algae, and be retracted. Pretty neat for a shrimp!

-Seabird

First Impression = heavily parasitized

2009-11-11T17:24:00.000-05:00

First impressions of the Southern Great Barrier Reef: Diversity is high, with a few species familiar to us from Polynesia, but most are new. Decapod abundance seems lower in comparison, but that could just be the microhabitats that we dove on yesterday. One thing does appear to occur in serious abundance: parasitism. In the samples from Biocode on Moorea, it is an unusual occurance for us to encounter a parasite on a crustacean or seastar- perhaps one in one hundred. Here in Australia the rate seems much much higher- perhaps one in five.

Here is an externally parasitic snail, Thyca, on the seastar Lincka multiflora

And here is an internally parasitic snail, Stylifer, on the same species of seastar.

Understanding the pattern behind these differences is the trick. Part of it may be that diversity begets diversity, creating what Phillipe Bouche has called "the russian dolls of biodiversity." This is where one organism may have a commensal organism living with it, that commensal may have a parasite, and that parasite may have a parasite. We certainly see it with coral, where one species of coral may host many symbionts and each of these may have their own set of commensals and parasites. By increasing the number of species of structural species (corals in this case, but could just as easily be trees in a rainforest) by one, we increase the over-all diversity by many.

This Pink Coral Guard Crab (Trapezia serenei) is a good example. It lives exclusively in one family of corals. If you look at the carapace, you can see that it is asymetrical. In this case that is indicative of a Boporid- a crustacean parasite on crustaceans that has infected the crab.

-Seabird

Creefs- Heron Island Australia

2009-11-10T21:22:00.000-05:00

Part of the team has just landed on Heron Island on the Southern Great Barrier Reef in Australia. After a rather "lumpy" two hour ride on the catamaran out to the island, we've started to settle in for a few weeks.

The island is absolutely alive with birds. During the day, noddies, egrets, rails, and plovers go about their business with cacaphonous ablomb. Now that the sun is setting, the shearwaters are arriving in droves, crash landing into people and buildings, then running to their nests in burrows in the sandy soil. It is new and amazing, though I am told that after a few weeks, you relish the comparative silence to be found underwater.

Our first dive will be tomorrow, so tonight we are setting up our equipment. We are here as part of the CReefs program to explore and document tropical marine biodiversity. As with Biocode, the efforts revolve around bringing in taxonomic and systematic experts to quantify as many taxa as possible during the short time we have here. FLMNH is represented by three people: Francois Michonneau, an expert in Holothurians, Rob Lasley who works on crabs, and myself, working on coral symbionts.

Hide and Seek

2009-11-10T03:06:00.000-05:00

What can you find in the photo above? Many of the organisms that our group studies are cryptic- hidden in their environment. Sometimes a trained eye can spot them- a slightly different texture, motion slightly out of sync with the rest of the setting- but most of the time we swim right past, just like everything else. When people think of the biodiversity of a coral reef, most think of colorful fish, or the corals. Yet the real bulk of diversity, and some of the most amazing creatures are the little things, the hidden things.

An interesting idea to think about is the coloration of reef creatures. Out of their habitat, some appear very colorful- almost psychedelic. But when placed on the reef with it's complex colors and shapes, they disappear. A good example of this is the shrimp Saron, photo below.

Both crabs and shrimps are very good at hiding, and several families of each group have specialized in crypsis, or camoflaouge. The family Majidae, or 'spider crabs' are a great example. Some members of this group are known as 'decorator crabs' because they gather material from the world around them and attach it to their shell and legs in order to hide.

Others, such as the shrimp family Crangonidae, rely on the coloration of the body itself to provide the protection. Can you find the shrimp in the photo below?

So how are you doing with that photo at the top? Here's a photo of the Leucosid crab that is in sand. See it now?

-Seabird

Assassin Worm

2009-11-05T02:39:00.000-05:00

The Marine Invertebrate Team of Biocode has been joined by Dr. Jon Norenburg, a specialist on Nemertean worms from the Smithsonian Institution (http://invertebrates.si.edu/staff/norenburg.cfm). During a recent outing to a shallow area in the lagoon, he found a small, pale Nemertean in his samples of the sand. It didn't look like anything special until he got it under a microscope, when the eyes at the tip of the snout were visible.

It turns out that it belongs to a group of nemertean worms that are active predators on crustaceans such as crabs. The original discovery of the group was made in Panama where a researcher studying the behavior of fiddler crabs repeatedly saw crabs suddenly freak out, making erratic motions. When he waded through the mud to get the crabs, they had been emptied- sucked dry. It turns out that a nemertean was lurking in the sand. When it detected the shadow of a crab passing overhead, it would harpoon it with a sharp stylet borne on its proboscis, enabling delivery of a dose of neurotoxin.

The worm secretes, through the same hole, digestive enzymes into the prey, rapidly liquifying the internal tissues. It then sucks out the resulting soup, leaving nothing but the exoskeleton sitting on the mud.

Now we know they are in Moorea. Crabs be warned!

-Seabird

Jurassic Scallops

2009-11-05T01:31:00.000-05:00

We spent most of the afternoon in Opunohu bay, brushing the underside of reef overhangs and cavelets with a brush and collecting the stuff that fell off. It is mucky work, stirring up clouds of silt and urchin spines. The results however are worth it. These habitats hold all sorts of specialities, some of which are limited to very specific areas of the reef.

This parthenopid crab matches the silt and algae covering the rocks perfectly, but fell into the net when brushed off.

The real find of the search were of propeamusid bivalves called Chlamydella. These little "proto-scallops" are living fossils that had their glory days back in the Mezozoic. During the Jurassic these were one of the dominant bivalve groups, before being replaced by modern scallops. Now, they survive only in the deep oceans, and in caves, where they have taken on a miniaturized existence. Like many other cave taxa, they brood their eggs, instead of releasing them into the water column, and have young that crawl away to set up shop near their parents.

-Seabird

Getting Muddy with Art

2009-11-04T18:21:00.000-05:00

Arthur Anker, a Postdoctoral Researcher with the FLMNH Invertebrate Zoology department, has a knack for finding the unnoticed things, the creatures that everyone else somehow misses. Here in Moorea, French Polynesia, Art has specialized in the muddy, mucky habitats that most marine biologists wouldn't stick a toe in. Art, however, thrives here, and has brought back a steady stream of new records, new species, and just plain amazing animals that don't seem to live anywhere else. Tools of the trade include a "Yabbie Pump" for pumping small animals from shrimp burrows, a range of fine dipnets, and the patience to work in two feet of muddy water for most of the day.

A few of Art's finds follow, but many more can be found on his flickr stream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artour_a/

-Seabird

Flat spell=opportunity.

2009-11-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

The swell on the North side of Moorea has dropped to almost nothing. These days of flat, glassy water are very rare here, and allow us to get into some remarkable places. The 'avas' or small channels that funnel water off of the reef crest are rarely searchable, as is the reef flat itself. These 'crash zone' habitats are home to some of French Polynesia's endemic species, including a species of Coral Guard Crab, Trapezia globosa, that is found nowhere else. This habitat is among the most likely places to find new species in any coral reef ecosystem due to the extreme inaccessibility.

-Seabird

Bluewater

2009-11-03T19:56:00.000-05:00

Dr. Steve Haddock of MBARI (www.mbari.org/staff/haddock) has joined the Marine Invertebrate Biocode Team to explore the gelatinous zooplankton, or 'gelata' of the pelagic, open water habitat that surrounds Moorea. After bringing the scientific divers up-to-speed on the specialized equipment and methods used to dive safely and productively in this 'extreme' habitat, Steve has immersed us in a completely blue world with a seemingly alien fauna. At a second glance however, most of these animals have relatives or connections much more familiar to us.

Pteropods for example, are highly modified gastropods, or snails- some of which have given up their shells in trade for a 'flying' lifestyle, with two beating fins or wings. Salps are the open ocean forms of ascidians ("sea squirts") that use the powerful water pumping system evolved originally for filter feeding, for 'jet propulsion' in the open waters.

The system truly belongs to the jellies- both the Medusae ("jellyfish") and the Ctenophores ("comb jellies"). In the deep water, without obstacles to bump into, the jellies have taken on a diversity of form unrivaled in the blue. Some are 'traditional' and have a rounded body with hanging tentacles. Others are not so conservative, and resemble nothing so much as actively moving lotus blossoms, fanning open 'petals' as they drop and recoil tentacles in an effort to catch even smaller members of this world.

-Seabird

Good Night for the Marine Biocode Team.

2009-10-23T02:11:00.000-04:00

The Marine Invertebrate Biocode Team did the first of this collecting season's night dives tonight, bringing back a rich assemblage of nocturnal animals from the reefs surrounding Moorea.

Several beautiful crustaceans were new for the inventory, including a species of Slipper Lobster (Scyllaridae: P.holthuisi), and two species of Swimming crab (Portunidae), while others were much more cryptic, including two species of Decorator Crab (Majidae) and a Penaeid shrimp.

Conditions were exceptionally calm, allowing the divers to get into the 'avas' or shallow water channels that run through the reef. Under normal conditions, this would be near-suicidal, so the fauna represented in these areas are under-represented in museum collections. The team spent most of the dive working very small areas of habitat, finding 'rare' and undescribed taxa and completely unknown ecological patterns among the cephalaspidean gastropods, brittlestars, xanthid crabs. Everyone is ready to spend all the time we can diving at night and taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

-Seabird

Meeting the Alis

2009-10-19T19:20:00.000-04:00

Two of the most active Invertebrate teams in the world had a chance to collaborate over the last few days. The R.V. Alis, and a team from Paris Museum led by Dr. Phillip Bouchet arrived in the Society Islands to do surveys of the deep-water fauna. The Biocode Marine Invertebrate team, led by Dr. Gustav Paulay was invited to use the samples to further the efforts to understand the fauna of French Polynesia. The first day held surprises for everyone as the deep-water dredges came back on board with a sparse but novel fauna.

Among the finds were a hermit crab that has just about lost its shell: it wears a miniscule clam to cover its miniaturized abdomen. In its crab-like shape, this new species is unlike any other hermit known. Other hermit crabs collected do not use a shell for covering their abdomen, but instead are covered by zoanthids (a cnidarian related to anemones and corals).

Other treasures were several deep-water sea cucumbers unknown from the area which will be useful in FLMNH's efforts to genetically sequence and understand the relationships in this enigmatic group of echinoderms.

-Seabird