Happy Holidays everyone! Its been great having you all as readers and participators in this blog for the 2nd year! Enjoy this short stop-motion video of an Insect Christmas by Vladislav Starevich. As the NC State Insect Museum notes, beware of the dubious taxonomy and just be amused by somersaulting insects.
A new invertebrate interactive game, I guess it's a game, sorta like Tamagotchi are a game, or are they?
Anyway, better than any tamawhatever, now you can design your own squid and set them free into the waters around New Zealand to hunt toothfish and grow. Check back in on them every once in a while and see how they grow. Its a wonderful addition to Te Papa Colossal Squid pages.
To all our friends, and friends of inverts everywhere, we'd like to wish you a Merry Cephalopodmass and Happy Holothuridays!
This was taken at the Mystic Aquarium around Halloween during the SeaScare festivities. The African Penguins were creating paintings for a raffle and in between sessions they occasionally interacted with the giant tarantula in their playroom.
I am posting this as a bit of a present to Kevin, who has an odd, some might even allow it is an un-natural, love for penguins. It also serves as a bridge to mention that our favorite Aquarium blogger Jeff Ives brings us a new blog: The Rockhopper Penguin Expedition Blog. Kevin is going to be in penguin heaven what with all the photos and cool video from the South American colonies of rockhoppers.
As a side note, I really do get into the expedition blogging, especially when they connect to the everyday activities as well as the major science activities. It really helps connect me to the sense of discovery and adventure. Does that make sense?
Quick survey of the twangs on my web, some invert, some not so much...
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice & Sunsets is back with a wonderful video of spider chemical substance reactions.
Karen James has a great discussion of science heroes and humanity vs deification, some great recipes, Newton's fingernails, and Galileo's finger over at The Beagle Project.
Miriam has posted a most psychedelic image of one of the most awesome structures in the world... the radula!
Emmet Duffy at the Natural Patriot has a review of the recent open access PNAS paper tracing the source of that last fast food meal giving great support to the notion to eat local. Can't wait to give a pdf of that paper (and the review) to my Econ prof, who claims to eat $1 menu fast food twice a day, every day extolling it's excellent value. (Of course I may take the...ahem....spineless route and give them to him after grades post instead of before the final tomorrow night.)
The final twang comes from the Wild Shores of Singapore where RIA posted a good intro to the ScienceNow piece on deep sea squid sex, complete with sperm packets everywhere... even lodged in a human throat!
Time to cram for Calc now....
Kevin just sent me an email about a blogger both of us have followed for some time - dalantech of the No Cropping Zone - a very talented macro photographer. (I love his deconstructions!)
December Drone by *dalantech
Check out the latest Carnival of the Blue up at the fabulous WaterNotes! Lots of great writing from our ocean blogging colleagues.
Nothing like a bit of chain dogfish egg / embryo for breakfast!
Actually the cut away section of outer casing was protected by a securely wrapped piece of parafilm, so I guess no Nom,Nom,Nom'ing going on...
But I wonder, there was that recent research about eating preference in cuttlefish appetites being shaped by what they saw through their egg membrane...
Will this chain dogfish ignore squid and only go after crustaceans?
Or is this the equivalent of the nightmare about your food eating you, you know the one where you run into a 2 meter tall steak knife wielding walking talking squid as you turn the corner and all he keeps repeating is ... what you never had that dream?
In case you missed the big news, Peter from Deep Sea News has the discoverer's take on the publishing of the paper on "his coral." It is a beautiful specimen to say the least!
The Southern Fried Scientist has created the Acuroscope based on "the much more chaotic and unpredictable movements of terrestrial bodies, careening through life and influencing those around them." It is proven to be "at least as accurate, and probably more so, as conventional horoscopes." Here is mine:
Benign Tumors (March 19 – April 11) – Beards are one of the best things in the world. You more than likely have one. The great beard-way has powerful influence over everyone in the world, especially yours. It is both the number of quality of beards in my immediate area that control your fate. However, unlike beards, which always get checked out, benign tumors rarely do, so in social situations you need to make the first move. Of course, no one is ever happy to see you but always happy to find out you’re harmless.
The photographer id's it as Nembrotha purpureolineata but the orange dorsal patch looks to me more like it is Nembrotha aurea as described in
Marta Pola, J. Lucas Cervera, Terrence M. Gosliner (2008). Revision of the Indo-Pacific genus Nembrotha (Nudibranchia: Dorididae: Polyceridae), with a description of two new species Scientia Marina, 72 (1) DOI: 10.3989/scimar.2008.72n1145
First that "scallywag" Brian from Laelaps tagged Kevin with a meme, and then what does he do? He nails me with it! And me without my meme vaccinations up to date! If Kevin will forgive me, I'm going to use his entry as a template:
5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago
Those scallywags, Brian from Laelaps and Adrian from Evolving Complexity, have tagged me with the 5 things meme. Wow, its been ages since those gosh darn memes have been traveling around. I swore we exhausted them out last year, but like a nasty infection you didn't quite clean out well enough, its come back. Here it goes!
5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago
Ok, finally got all that writing stuff done so I can connect to the net again. Jack in and what do I find?
Almost every way of preserving it makes it shrink!
The Te Papa staff are counting down the days to their new exhibit of the colossal squid:
Of course in the original press surrounding the capture of the squid, it was mentioned by many sources that the squid was thought to have a total length in excess of 6 metes and possibly as long as 8m. When it was dissected and preserved, it measured out at 4.2 meters. The museum researchers and staff decided to see if there was a cause for the discrepancy and found that the original, unpreserved flaccid length was probably about 6 meters. Of course since squid have no bones and extremely elastic tissues, when it was alive and under the proper stimulation the squid may have exceeded 8m in length.
I only wish there was a way for me to get down to NZ over the break. Hmmm... wait there is a symposium on deep sea coral in NZ next week... maybe Professor A. would take me with him...I can ride in the suitcase for deep sea coral associate ecology and Te Papa... Passport's ready and up to date...besides, I wanted to check out grad school opportunities down there. Hmmm....
When the going gets tough, the starved huddle together en masse. You might expect this behavior from musk oxen, schools of fish or even armies of anemones. New research published in the open access journal PLoS Biology demonstrates that our spineless protistan cousins, the amoeba, seek out genetically similar relatives when they are under stress. They aggregate together to form a fruiting body which will carry their genetic information safely on when better days arrive. This happens at an expense though. Nearly 20% of individual amoebas will perish in this effort "altruistically" giving their all for their cousins. The spores of the fruiting body are hardy and will go on carrying the amoebas' genetic heritage, while some cells will die making the stalk that lifts the fruiting body off of the ground. The higher the fruiting body the more likely and farther it will be dispersed.
Figure 4: Sorting of Strains during Multicellular Development. Cells expressing either GFP or DsRed were mixed at equal proportions and allowed to develop on agar plates. Pictures were taken at the indicated developmental time points and the merged image of the two fluorophores is shown. (A) A mix of the genetically dissimilar strains AX4-DsRed and QS44-GFP shows increased segregation with time. (B) A mix of the genetically identical strains AX4-DsRed and AX4-GFP shows no segregation.In the case of the insects vs. the trucks, it looks like the insects finally get their day in court. In England, a group called Buglife – an invertebrate conservation group – has taken developers of a truck park and warehouse to court to save some 1300 species of invertebrates, including 900 that are listed as nationally important by Britain. The site of the construction, West Thurrock Marshes in Essex, is sensitive habitat and home to one of England's most diverse populations of invertebrates.
Good luck Inverts!
Decompressing after tests, I stumbled across the Archipelagos blog where an international group of scientists, researchers, and volunteers work together to study and conserve resources in the Aegean. The organization is using the blog as a major component of their outreach and news dissemination.
The organization's main site gives a strong clue to what is found in the blog... conservation, research, outreach and field courses spread across 4 research stations and 2 research bases through the Aegean Sea. 
The blog has notes from the research teams and volunteers about the various projects that are going on and their adventures. A sampling of November postings – each by a different trainee researcher – includes diurnal changes in the invertebrate community off Faros, issues surrounding solid waste disposal and hypocrisy, habitat mapping, a forest fire, beaches as ash trays, and graphic design for the environment.
The last one, a posting by a designer with a Bsc Product Design and Innovation degree, really caught my eye as it is not what I expect to see on an environmental or science blog – talking about the design projects for this NGO. Unfortunately design of outreach materials is often – though certainly not always – an afterthought. Having pursued design at BSU before life got in the way, I want to use design in my career going forward, so I love seeing design projects and concerns being discussed in connection to science and an NGO. I was especially pleased to discover that Archipelagos offers a 10 day course on Marine Scientific Illustration and Underwater Photography. Pretty cool.
I could easily see spending a few months out there with this group. Seeing as my schedule is a little bit cramped right now though, I'll have to settle for snatching a few minutes every couple days to spend there virtually.
It's beautiful, sunny, 75°F (24°C). The trees are lush and green as the calm water gently reflects the sunshine. A nice warm breeze coming in through the open screen door. This is perhaps the nicest November I have ever been witnessed to. Oh, and there was a butterfly outside my window! In Mid-Novemeber! I ain't leaving North Carolina... EVAH!
Things have been even more quiet at The New Blue than here for the past month or so, but it turns out there is no cause for alarm as it seems that Jives has been just a wee bit busy!
He announced today on the blog that a new feature has been rolled out at the New England Aquarium – a virtual aquarium tour they call the NEAQ Mobile Tour. It's available as 16 videos at the NEAQ site or as an iTunes download (video or audio tours)! Take the Aquarium Tour on your iPod as your virtual guide at the Aquarium... cool!
My favorite "chapters" of course are the Jellies, the Giant Pacific Octopus and the whale lice...er, I mean the Northern Right Whales.
Be sure to check them all out and give Jives a bit of feedback!
How many invert species do you see?
This is a detail from this much larger, gorgeous photo from Antarctica that ran as a feature on Boston.com this past weekend. The series of 32 images are awe inspiring even if there is only the one invert filled image:
Earth-Touch.com is a great resource for some high-def invert video.
This video below is a small, re-sized sample of a really nice longer 720p video from one of the Japanese ships sunk at Palau. Many inverts in the video, but the marine flatworm, coolest of the Platyhelminthes (to my untrained eye, I believe it is Maritigrella crozierae) is my favorite from the whole clip. (The narrator speaks of two of them, in a bit of invert porn, but I only see one in the video... is it just me?)
My good friend, science blogger comrade and all around awesome palaeo-blogger is in the final 20 for the 2008 Student Blogging Scholarships If he wins he gets $10K to pay for his last semester in school and help him out with student loans. So head over right now to the 2008 Student Blogging Scholarship and vote for Brian Switek!
The whiteboard from the undergrad lounge in the marine science building at UCONN Avery Point....
There was an astonishing amount of entries to this edition of the Carnival of Evolution. I can tell this one is here to stay. The fifth edition promises to continue the high quality of submissions we have seen thus far. A real potpourri of evolution from paleobiology to development, education to speculation.
"Now, we can talk about controversies on the tree of life. How closely related are we to Neanderthals? That’s a great question in science. The question is not “Are we related to Neanderthals?” Biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists have skirmishes over portions of the tree of life. None of them argue that they are on it.Drinking deep from the literature, Aydin of the Snail's Tales discusses a quote from a 1915 text:
But that’s not what Explore Evolution would have us believe. They want to foist a particular notion, the “Orchard of Life” on high school students. No one in biology talks about the orchard of life..."
"Had the biologists indeed abandoned the evolutionary theory at the turn of the 20th century, evolutionary explanations of biological phenomena would by now be an almost-forgotten chapter in the annals of biology."
"these arguments may seem convincing to anyone who hasn't taken intro biology, but any undergrad worth their auto-pipette should be able to see right through Professor Jones' nonsense."
"Yet we are to believe that a “designer” capable of creating extremely complex systems–of the kind that humans cannot presently create–went back again and again to legs in order to design vertebrate wings. Which is just as evolution predicts, in the tetrapod context. Would anybody ever expect that of an alien?"Grrl Scientist discusses new research on everyone's favorite evolutionary transition fossil, Tiktaalik!
"The new study reminds us that the gradual transition from aquatic to terrestrial lifestyles required much more than the evolution of limbs"
"What is exciting these days is that progress in neuroimaging and in genetics make it possible to think about self-regulation in terms of specific brain-based networks."Nagraj, one of the Hoxful Monsters, discusses new research on the origin and evolution of microRNA's in animals.
"Micro RNAs present in plants and algae have a different gene structure, biogenesis and targeting properties from those of animals, and these miRNAs are not found in fungi. Based on the above facts it's generally considered that miRNAs in plants and animals had independent origin."
"Personally, I think one of the most amazing aspects of this study was just how quickly these flies evolved to survive and develop perpetually in severely low oxygen conditions. In only 32 generations the flies were able to live in oxygen conditions completely lethal to normal flies."
"Heritability deals with the likelihood or probability of traits running in families. But here is the catch: something can be heritable due to genetics or environment. In this case the environment includes culture or habits and behaviors that you experience and accept as a normal and everyday. Everything that shared among related individuals isn’t necessarily because they share the same genes."
"The fun of evolution isn't in looking back - it's in looking forward. So let's take just one moment to release a barrel of monkeys into evolution and the future we're so upset about. Instead of the glass being half-empty, it's merely awaiting the next set of species to fill it."
Say it ain't so! What a horrible nightmare you sent me Eelke!
*Bivalve anatomy & systematics postdoc*
A postdoctoral position is available for a full-time postdoctoral researcher in the Bivalve Tree-of-Life project. For project information, please see www.bivatol.org.
Initial appointment for this Field Museum (Chicago)-based term position is made for 12 months, with opportunity for performance-based renewal for up to three additional years. Starting salary is $40,000.
Primary focus of the position will be to investigate gill and labial palp morphology across the Bivalvia, using various techniques including anatomical dissections, histology, electron microscopy, 3-D computer-assisted reconstructions, as well as field observations on living animals. In addition, the postdoc will participate in the collections management aspects of the BivAToL project, and will be part of larger group efforts such as field collecting and phylogenetic analyses. Opportunity will exist for "first-authored" project development as well as for exposure to additional (e.g., molecular) techniques.
The candidate should have the following proven attributes:
● PhD in relevant area
● Experience in at least some of the mentioned techniques and approaches
● Marine invertebrate background; with molluscan expertise preferred
● Strong interest in comparative and functional morphology
● Capacity to work in a team as well as independently
● Availability in early 2009
Interested candidates should send a CV, statement of research interests, and contact information for three references via email (pdf) to Rüdiger Bieler (rbieler at fieldmuseum dot org).
Evaluation of applications will begin on November 1 and continue until a suitable candidate is found. Earliest starting date will be in January 2009.
The Other 95% is hosting the next Carnival of Evolution on Saturday, November 1. Put links in the comments to anything you read relating to evolution for my consideration.
I love this video of Euglossine bees pollinating the brazilian orchid, Catasetum macrocarpum.
Life Photo Meme
For those who claimed we were exceptionally biased in our Invert vs. Vert wars...this one comes from one of my favorite fish ecologists...
Wolffish eating a sea urchin from CLF (credit: Jonathan Bird) on Vimeo.
Oh, the horror. This poor echinoderm managed to wander right in front of the wolf's den. Then again, it is a worthy sacrifice, considering the current state of the wolffish. That's it, yeah, the urchin was doing it's part to save the wolffish!
I'll have to add the score in later... I gotta run, late for class! In the mean time enjoy the other Wolffish videos from CLF, including another invert vs. vert.
Miriam at the Oysters Garter needs a little invert help. Her beautiful short play is a finalist in a competition, but the competition is tough and one of the competitors is using an eight year old to play the cute card. At stake are four dozen farmed oysters which Miriam and Eric plan to share with a handful of poor graduate students (is there any other kind?).
So check out the options, then do the right spineless thing and vote for Oysters Garter. Remember, a vote for Miriam means a high quality meal for half dozen grad students and $80 towards the Nature Conservancy’s Olympia Oyster restoration project. Just think of the incredible progress they will be able to make on their theses with such a high quality food in their bellies!
Of course I think that the only way to have four dozen oysters is raw with Tabasco or lemon juice. Or fish sauce, lime and chili peppers!
Apparently its really bad to associate with atheists. This video was produced with the aim of exposing North Carolina senate candidate as a supporter of the godless. "Heaven forbid" she actually does not see godless americans as a threat and take every opportunity slander them. This is just so ridiculous and offensive. Its produced in such a slimy way to mislead and direct voters to a false argument of guilt by association. I think it shows she is open minded and welcoming to all philosophies. It is a rare individual in politics to acknowledge the existence of the "nones".
The Letterkenny Institute of Technology in County Donegal, Ireland is looking to fill a biochemistry postdoc position screening and analyzing bioactive compounds from crustacean shells. If you have a Ph.D. in a related field and love screening bio compounds, chromatography and protein isolation, check out the postion at www.cambio.ie or email the Project Manager, Dr. W. Brück at wolfram dot bruck at lyit dot ie.
Closing date is November 7th.
Nikon has declared the winners of the 2008 Small World Photomicrogaphy Competition. The winner was this image of filaments within diatoms shot through polarizing filters by retired microsopist Michael Stringer.
All my favorites are among the invertebrate entries of course:
And the Thinning soap film in the Popular Vote Contest.
While you're at the Small World site, check out the "Identify the Image Challenge"
Today I managed 4 of 5, earning a rank of Magnification Master! But each day is a different set of images...
Life Photo Meme
Coffee is something that is sacred to me. I value heavily the flavor, robustness and quality of craft roasted beans. I read Coffee and Conservation regularly because it provides me news on the small coffee growers that are trying to grow their coffee crops in sustainable ways. Coffee plantations planted under shade trees have a direct ecological benefit to many tropical fauna and flora, including rare or endangered butterflies and birds. Large corporations that grow coffee beans on a large scale clear the land for large plantations and make the habitat unfavorable to forest fauna. This reduces soil quality very quickly. Bean flavor is related to soil quality which is one reason that Folgers, Maxwell, etc. beans lack the key characteristics of a really good coffee that you may buy at a coffee house. The other reason is that the "robusta" bean variety has been heavily engineered to be mild for the average american palate. So much so that I feel as if I am just drinking hot dirty water.
But there is a human cost to buying coffee from these large multinational corporations. It increases poverty and prevents farmers from making beyond 5-10% profit on the beans. Coffee and Conservation has a nice article up today that lays out the case with several important link embedded in the article. I highly recommend bookmarking the website and flipping through its webpages!
Can switching the coffee I drink really help?The U.S. is one of the world's largest coffee consumers. We can make a difference. Quit supporting the poverty and environmental destruction that cheap coffee from these large multinationals perpetuates.
Good coffee for which a fair price is paid is not too expensive for most Americans. In fact, 45% of Folgers and Maxwell House purchasers have incomes greater than $50,000 a year. Even coffee that costs $15 a pound works out to well under a dollar a cup, tastes great, helps preserve biodiversity, and provides a decent living for coffee farmers.
Kristjan Wager (no relation to Pascal) has the 116th Tangled Bank collection online at Pro-Science!
Mike Haubrich also has the 4th edition of the Carnival of Evolution up at Clashing Culture. I'll be hosting the next edition of the Carnival of Evolution here on November 1st. Send me your submissions through the blog carnival submission form or leave the links in the comments!
Todd Oakley, writer of the wonderful OstraBlog series at Evolutionary Novelties, put up a post in which he invited all of us to "Tawk amongst yah-selves." He offered up two topics for discussion, one for for the bar scene, the other more appropriate for all other social environments – Why has bioluminescence evolved SO many times in the marine environment, but almost never in freshwater environments? Be sure to head over and join in the Tawk.
After leaving a quick comment I decided I could spare 10 minutes or so for some a quick journal search (is that really possible?) I found a couple of interesting abstracts, but one of the most intriguing paper is....not available through my institution.
If anyone has access to the following paper please let me know at eric.heupel at gmail or at eric.heupel at uconn dot edu...
Seliger, H.H. (2008) The Origin of Bioluminescence. Photochemistry and Photobiology 21, 355-361(1975). DOI:10.1111/j.1751-1097.1975.tb06684.x
Praxis, the blog carnival about "scientific life", has landed here at The Other 95%. Welcome and make sure you look around at the work of my spineless co-blogger Eric and myself. The last edition was held at Life v. 3.0. Make sure you submit to Praxis #4 to be held at The Lay Scientist. Go ahead and host one yourself as well! Now on to the carnival.
Open Access Day and 5 Years of PLoS!!!
It was Open Access Day yesterday which (nearly) coincided with the 5th year anniversary of PLoS on October 13. PLoS asked "Why does open access matter to you". Check out all the replies aggregated in the Synchroblogging Competition post!
Difficulties of Being a Scientist
KH at Lecturer Notes ponders junior faculty naivete. Head over there to remind KH that making mistakes is part of the learning process!
The Rock Doctor at Life v. 3.0 has a post up describing her thoughts on being different from her friends. Science often takes people down an interesting path that neither social circumstances, religion or personaly/family history can control. You either succumb to the mold or let the journey carry you onward.
Bill at Open Reading Frame reminds everyone that no goes into science to get rich by plotting monthly salary versus experience. The results? Go there and see his analysis!
Searching for a job is no easy task. We all have our ideals. A nice salary, maybe able to purchase that first home, live in a nice area with plenty of weekend adventure opportunities and culture. But the job we want isn't always there or isn't always yours. That is why Physioprof over at Drugmonkey reminds us to cast a wide net when job hunting!
Is Biology Chemistry?
Bora from A Blog Around the Clock waxes poetic on Green Fluorescence Protein winning the Nobel prize in Chemistry. For some reason he seems to think the "nobel" jellyfish isn't deserving of the prize. Oh, I guess some people got the prize not the jelly. My bad. But he has several comments on what discerns Medicine/Physiology from Chemistry. The line is often blurred in the awarding of the Nobel Prizes. The don't join the bandwagon rant resonates with me for sure!
Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata also weighs on the GFP Nobel issue and concludes that "funding agencies [need] to support a broad range of chemical and biological research". Find out why at Terra Sigillata!
Revolutionizing Peer Review
Cameron Neylon at Science in the Open offers up a few ideas about bringing peer review into the 21st century. This includes taking into account online articles (such as blog posts), wiki-style reviewing, open reviewing, aggregation after review, and much much more. Be sure to follow the excellent comment thread. Cameron also offers up his personal view of open science. If you are not a "believer" in open access and open science after this post (the 1st in a series), then there is no hope for you or you must work for "that one". Superbly done.
Bjorn Brembs also puts out an excellent post about transparent peer review, but has a different take on it from Cameron. It starts with a discussion forum, ends with a journal publication. But it is what happens between those two stages that is important.
Do it for the Children?
Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science supports the progress of women in science but asks a very important question of a german initiative. Should women with kids get special treatment for scholarships? There are lots of underlying assumptions with this, be sure to read through the comment thread as well. Zuska also weighs in with her thoughts.
Fight the Power!
Sick of Thomson-ISI or just want an open source alternative to EndNote? After hearing about Thomson Reuter's bogus lawsuit against George Mason University, where the open source referencing software Zotero was made by Dr. Daniel Cohen, for violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base (i.e. reverse engineering the .ens file format), I decided to give Zotero a whirl. It rocks and it integrates well with NeoOffice, the open source word editting software made for the Mac platform. Kevin Smith from Scholarly Communications@Duke distills down the copyright issues associated with the lawsuit. He has many excellent points and concerns, such as:
"In general, open source software is a gift that many universities like George Mason give to the academic community as a whole, and the value of that gift is increased if it is possible for scholars who have been using a costly commercial product to move their research resources from the latter into the former. That increased value (an “externality” in economic jargon) could be weighed against Thomson’s loss (which they allege is around $10 million per year) in reaching a reasonable decision about contract enforcement."Somewhat on the topic of Thomson, at least the use of their metric, John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts mentions the joint response of many journals from the History of Science, Technology and Medicine fields to the stupidity of index metrics.
"We now confront a situation in which our own research work is being subjected to putatively precise accountancy by arbitrary and unaccountable agencies."Larry Moran at the Sandwalk kindly reminds us that scientists, too, can be activists. The picture of Haldane raising his fist, passionately lecturing a large crowd of the "United Front" is priceless. What scientists are standing up with the people and demanding answers to pertenant issues of our day?
In lieu of a full quasi-informational posting while I prep for mid-terms I offer....
Mollusc Porn!
We're hosting Praxis October 15th and have very few submissions so far!! Surely you all have something to say about how science? Such as:
"... all aspects of life as an academic, whether it's the lifestyle, career progress, doing a Ph.D., getting funding, climbing the slippery pole, academic life as a minority, working with colleagues and students, dealing with the peer-review process, publishing, grants, science 2.0, amusing anecdotes, conference experiences, philosophical musings, public engagement, or even historical articles about what life was like in the good (or bad) old days."So leave your submissions in the comments here or email them to me (address in the sidebar)! You have till midnight October 14th!
CEPHALOPODS HAVE TAKEN CONTROL of this month's Carnival of the Blue!!! There is much fine tentacled offerings over at the Cephalopodcast. Jason lays it out real nicely and offers entertaining commentary. Lots of great links so be sure to drop by for a visit and check the place out! Deep Sea News will be hosting the next edition of the Carnival of the Blue in November, so be sure to write some great posts on anything related to the oceans and let them know!
Life Photo Meme
Another great Linnaeus’ Legacy is up over at PodBlack Cat with killer entries that generated keywords in my filter of ants, sex, PhyloCode, ants, komodos, genebank hell, ants, fishmongers, genebank hell and your ass.
Ok, it a stretch, but this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists, Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien, for their "discovery, expression and development" of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, providing scientists with a high resolution molecular level marker to track both inter and intra cellular processes. GFP has revolutionized scientist's ability to track cell division, gene expression, protein interactions, chromosome replication, transport pathways, organelle inheritance and more. GFP has also been used to create sensors which can be read from within living cells, reporting pH values and ion concentrations. All this coming from a sweet little protein first observed in a jellyfish.
You may ask "What's so special about GFP that makes it different from other fluorescent compounds?"
What's really cool, and what makes GFP so useful as a marker is that it needs no other compounds or structures to cause its fluorescence. The chromophore is formed spontaneously from the structure of the protein and it only requires oxygen fluoresce. This means that the protein by itself can be placed into any organism and it will maintain it's fluorescent properties when it is expressed. The protein is also non-toxic and has been expressed in many organisms with no or minor physiological effects on the organism. The gene for GFP can also be combined with genes for proteins scientists want to study. This doesn't change the study protein's normal activity, yet the GFP remains fluorescent so the protein can be tracked by its fluorescence signature (400nm excitation peak -> sharp peak 505nm emission).
While the original GFP comes from the jellies, GFP-like proteins have been found in other cnidarians, primarily in the corals (anthozoa), allowing GFP monitoring with a range of spectral signatures to be used like with the red glowing cat below!
As a note one of the recipients, Osamu Shimomura, worked extensively on Cypridina ostracods, one of several bioluminescent ostracods. However they are not molluscs, contrary to what is in the Nobel Prize report (pdf).
If you haven't been following the Deep Sea News trio since the big move to the Discovery Channel, you have some catching up to do on some great posts. Kevin has kept the invertebrates in the spotlight there too, with posts such as the Deep Sea Quiz featuring a baby shrimp.
For the rest of the month the guys are featuring a daily series featuring the best deep-sea species. The series is off to a spectacularly spineless start with brachiopods of the deep and exotic shores. An immediate follow up with the Pig Butt Worm (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) a post with great images of the Big Butt and a revealing admission by Miriam of the Oyster's Garter. They have completed an invert triple play with creeping crinoids including some great video!
I can't wait to see what is served up next in the series, there are still many great deep sea inverts to feature!
Welcome to the 24th edition of the Boneyard. The blog carnival for everything old. Zach gave a good carnival last month, but there was something missing. Something obviously out of place. After pondering about it all month I realize this blog, The Other 95%, was the only blog that submitted a palaeo-invertebrate entry out of 15 total links. 1 out of 15, that's 6.7%, meaning that the amount of vertebrate entries were 93.3%. I was shocked, flabbergasted! While this edition will also be laden with vertebrate-centric scriblings, I'll will even out the score and ensure that at least 93.3% of the links, images and video for this edition more accurately reflect the diversity of animal life. Enjoy!
