Pick a Card, Any Card

Another of the Ocean Challenge in the Classroom projects has been fully funded! So...
Pick a card any card, leave your pick in a comment or as a tweet to @eclecticechoes. The card with the most choices (or in a tie a random choice among the tied) will be featured here tomorrow.

Nautilus Night - Cephalopod of Diamonds

Ok. I said for each of the Ocean in the Classroom projects fully funded I would put up a post about one invert from the deck of cards I have been working on, along with a sneak peak at a card. So, since the Making Waves, Oceans and Landforms got fully funded, and in honor of Nautilus Night I bring you the Cephalopod of Diamonds - The Chambered Nautilus.

Classification for the Chambered Nautilus

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Mollusca

Class

Cephalopoda

Order

Nautilida

Family

Nautilidae

Genus

Nautilus

Species

N. belauensis

Some interesting facts about the chambered nautilus (and other extant nautiloids):

The 6-7 (there is still debate on the status of one species) extant species of nautilus come from two genera, the 4-5 smooth nautilus'(genus Nautilus) and the 2 species of hairy nautilus (genus Allonautilus - literally "other nautilus").

They are the only remaining cephalopods that retain an external shell, which they use for defense and as a buoyancy control system. The shell, with buoyancy control, was a significant weapon evolutionarily, as it afforded the early cephalopods the protection of a thick shell yet the advanced buoyancy control unchained them from the sea floor as most of the periods marine arthropods were.

Modern nautilus are generally found on steep coral reef slopes at a depth of 200-400m during the day. They rise at night to feed near or at the surface, using the adjustable buoyancy of their gas filled shells to good effect during the vertical migration.

Unlike other cephalopods, the nautilus do not have a lensed eye. The nautilus eye is more like a pinhole camera, leading to the hypothesis that it uses olfaction to find it's prey (mostly shrimp and other crustaceans along with some small fish.)

Nautiloids also have upwards of 90 tentacles (compare with 8 arms of octopods and 8 arms an two tentacles of squid and cuttlefish.)

Last bit for this post is their lifespan and reproduction. Most cephalopods are short lived with overall lifespans of even the Giant Pacific Octopus being around 2-3 years. For most studied cephalopods natural death from old age occurs after mating, (and for females egg guarding), which is only done once (called semelparity). Nautilus can live in 15-20 years and mate year after year (iteroparity).

The nautilus are the ancient lineage of the cephalopods, descendants of and most like the orthocerids and other nautiloids that were a major predator of the seas in the Ordovician period. Modern nautiloids are the only cephalopods that retain their external shell and are often considered to be "living fossils" as they are very similar in appearance to the ammonites and nautiloids that emerged half a billion years ago in the Cambrian. However recent molecular studies are casting some doubt on the appropriateness of the "living fossil" moniker. Studies published in the past couple years have revealed that the 6-7 extant species of nautilus evolved much more recently, around 2 million years ago, in the seas around New Guinea. They then


Sinclair, B., Briskey, L., Aspden, W., & Pegg, G. (2006). Genetic diversity of isolated populations of Nautilus pompilius (Mollusca, Cephalopoda) in the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 17 (2-3), 223-235 DOI: 10.1007/s11160-006-9030-x

Ocean in the Classroom Challenge

Today's a big outreach day!

First up, an outreach project I that has been part of my life for the past year is finally coming to be. This afternoon I will finally see the professionally printed version of my deck of cards that will be used to help teach molluscan diversity. They are still prototypes so I can't show them here just yet. Hopefully soon I can highlight a few of the cards along with some discussion about the animals on them and the process of making them. I am looking forward to hearing from the COSEE particpants at Avery Point who will be getting a sneak peak at them today through Saturday.

On a much larger scale Dr. M and Kevin have gathered together many of the top ocean bloggers to support some serious K-12 education outreach: Ocean in the Classroom Challenge. I just looked through the challenge and there are seven great projects in there, including several that are aquatic invertebrate centered. Personally I love the Invertebrates in my Tank, Waders and Coral Flip Book projects because they touch close to home, so to speak.

I would take the website hostage like the DSN boys are doing, but that won't work so well here where it has been so quiet lately. However, maybe the opposite will work, for each project that gets fully funded I'll put up a post on recent research about one of animals featured in the card decks.

Channeled Whelk with Egg Cases

Channeled Whelk with Egg Cases, originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

Family friends bought us passes for Project Oceanology's Enviro Lab cruises at an auction this summer, and finally, as the summer draws to a close, we were able to take advantage of them. Project O is an outreach center that focuses on marine science and environmental awareness especially of the Long Island Sound ecosystem. Their Enviro Lab boats are equipped with a small sample trawl, water quality samplers and sediment samplers. I had been on the Enviro Lab boats with classes from the Marine Science undergraduate program at Avery Point (Project O is located on the Avery Point Campus).

For Johann and Tammy it was a new and exciting adventure. Johann's favorite part was examining the results of the benthic sample trawl. After seeing the Mystic Whaler (Which chanteyman extraordinaire Geoff Kaufman often sails aboard) he was inspired to sing a round of "Donkey Riding" as he reeled in the line from the trawl. The fun really started when he got to get really hands on with the samples helping quickly sort the haul and get all the animals into the large wet tanks. In the haul were a dozen Scup (Stenotomus chrysops), several Sea Robin (Prionotus carolinus), some Atlantic Moonfish juveniles (Selene setapinnis), what looked like a small striped bass (I didn't get to see it but that was the description), a feisty female little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) and a spotted hake (Urophycis regia).

While there was quite a number of vertebrates in the haul, there were far more inverts brought up. Among the inverts there were in excess of a hundred spider crabs (Libinia emarginata), two lobster (Homarus americanus,)(both female), two European Green Crabs (Carcinus maenas), one Jonah Crab (Cancer borealis), several broad-clawed hermit crabs (Pagurus pollicaris) and one male Horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). Molluscs were well represented as well with many mud snails (Nassarius obsoletus) and slipper shells (Crepidula fornicata)as well as a half dozen loligo squid.

The real prize though was this female channeled whelk (Busycotypus canaliculatus formerly Busycon canaliculatus). Johann spotted her and pointed out the fact she was currently "laying" and egg case string. Soon after the animals were sorted into the tanks, the guide showed the whelk and explained the egg case string to the guests, then she carefully (more or less) dropped the whelk back into the sound.

The main reproductive time for the channeled whelks is the fall. Egg strings like the one this lady is laying will consist of 40-160 or more egg cases all joined by a tough leathery string. Each case may have as many as 100 eggs inside, though the average number of eggs per case is closer to 40. Not all the eggs in each case are fertilized though and the unfertilized eggs serve as food for the young whelks which emerge from the cases as miniature adults.

There is a small fishery for whelks here in the Long Island Sound, mostly sold in Italian markets as scungili. Unfortunately the most common bait used is chopped up horseshoe crab.

Life Photo Meme

Insect Ecology Lecture

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

Nudibranchs, Coral and Math

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

Tools for Spineless Research: FoxyProxy

Kevin has brought you more than one great resource for research, including the awesome Zotero extension for Firefox. I wanted to mention another one here that I use daily on my laptop – FoxyProxy.


FoxyProxy allows you to switch between proxies on the fly or, for me more importantly, switch proxies based on the url being visited. I keep four proxies configured for different groups of sites. I have the university proxy which is used for a number of science journal publishing sites (Elsevier, Blackwell etc.), my BBC proxy for watching BBC UK shows, my web hosting proxy I use sometimes for downloads, and finally the default "proxy" which is a straight connection to the net.

The real beauty of this setup is that it is automatic. I don't have to remain connected to the university proxy (which can be a bit slow at times) but when I stumble across another paper I want to read that is hosted at one of the sites in the proxy, it automatically logs me into the proxy and uses the proxy connection to grab the paper, even though the other tabs may be connected to my BBC proxy or directly connected. Unfortunately it doesn't do anything to help the inevitable case of needing/wanting a paper that your institution doesn't subscribe to, but it makes accessing the rest painlessly easy wherever I am.

Digimorphed Invertebrates

At The Open Source Paleontologist I noticed his recent posting Welcome, Longhorns. I have never been a big school spirit rah rah rah type, but having lived in Texas as a kid I have always loved UT and it was where I was going to go when I first got out of the Army. So naturally I followed the link to the class and found myself eventually at the site Digimorph.org. If you're not familiar with it (I wasn't) Digimorph is an NSF funded project at UT that is part of the digital libraries initiative. It has an amazing collection of digital morphology studies created using CT scans. They have over a terrabyte of data covering living and extinct species of interest to active research and eduction. Most of the focus for the project in the past was on vertebrate species, but they are adding more and more invertebrates now.
The data is available online as Quicktime movies and still images and a very cool java applet that lets you pick the slice you want to view.


They have 750 or so specimen available online right now, including a small number of inverts such as this Mespilia globulus which has movies and imagery available from all three imaging planes:



I really love this site as it combines so many of my past things together: 3D (including 3D printing and animation), visualization, computers and biology. Guess who just found a new timesink! Gotta get some invertebrates into the most popular.

Southern Fried Linkage

A couple of quick links that I wish I had more time to write up, but I don't want to wait to share:

These two links are from Southern Fried Scientist, a graduate student from the lab Kevin works in at Duke, who has splashed into science blogging with both feet.

This semester he is TA'ing an Invertebrate Zoology class for Cindy Van Dover, and made a request for "the best marine invertebrate zoology blog post". It's a great list with many entries from TO95, DSN, and from all over the blogosphere. I really have to thank SFS for prompting me to go back through most of the postings from here to pick the meatiest ones so I can highlight them for future applications (hopefully that won't be needed for a while!)

Also connected to his TA'ing activities is an awesome series of posts featuring short video productions, by the students in the class: Topics in Marine Invertebrate Zoology.

Archipelagos

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.

Insect Challenge!

Bug Girl has created a great challenge at Donors Choose, one that should be of interest to all our readers – it's a collection of insect related projects at high poverty schools. A worthy cause for sure.

If you're not familiar with DonorsChoose.org, they describe themselves as "a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund."

She's also asking for suggestions for a wacky reward to all of us once we help fund all the projects on her challenge...go read about her previous wacky adventures, give her some idea for the "reward" and help out some potential future entomologists.

Jetpropulsion in juvenile squids and cuttlefish

I'm in the process of narrowing down my options for masters programs for next fall and ran across the Marine Biology program at the University of Groningen and its opportunities for masters research page. A number of interesting projects there, but one that caught my eye especially was the Jetpropulsion in juvenile squids and cuttlefish with Eize Stamhuis & Henk-Jan Hoving. Combines molluscs (even better cephalopods), juvenile forms, physics and scuba for sample collecting!

"Juvenile squid and cuttlefish start to swim immediately after hatching from the eggs. Adult squids and cuttlefish propel themselves by jet-propulsion, that is by accelerating a mass of water through the siphon outwards by contraction of their mantle. This process relies on inertial forces only: action = reaction ( Newton ’s third law). Freshly hatched juvenile squids and cuttlefish are so small (2 to 5 mm) that viscosity may also be a ruling factor. Till today, nobody has studied the flow producing capacities of juvenile cephalopods in relation to adults. Here we plan to have hatching squid and cuttlefish eggs in the lab to study the swimming behaviour of the juveniles as well as their flow production capacities immediately after hatching to study how they deal with the balance between viscosity and inertia."

Open University Biology - Suspension Feeding

The other day we featured a really cool video from the 1970's featuring Mel Carriker's work on the radula and the accessory boring organ (ABO) in the oyster drill. Today we have some video from one of his former students* featuring feeding in a different group of molluscs.

iTunes has just added some excellent content to their free iTunesU area - Open University Videos. Included in the initial offering are 5 science "courses", including "The Galapagos" and "Biology: Uniformity and Diversity". "Biology" has 13 short videos (2 - 10 minutes each) covering aspects of biology including fungi, "microbes", spiders, and suspension feeders.

The suspension feeders episode features J. Evan Ward, sitting down to a plate of oysters, mussels, clams, and scallops to introduce how he examines the diversity of feeding mechanisms in suspension feeding bivalves. The great thing is that the Open University video, while probably aimed at high school and early college, is accessible to a wide range of audiences. My family watched them all, and of course my 8 year old's favorite part is the mucous strings on the gill margins. More fun dinner topics!

The Ward lab's video page has more video, including this endoscope video showing the feeding processes of Mytilis sp.:

*Just to be totally up front about it, Evan is also my undergrad adviser and I am currently employed as an intern in his lab, but none of that has diddly to do with why I think the video is cool, or why I am posting it.

Build Your Own HMS Beagle

This ship is EVERYONE's ship. Make it a reality!

Find out more at The Beagle Project, follow their blog, buy the shirt and donate a couple bucks!

Thoughts on Education and Popular Science Books

Brian from the wonderful blog Laelaps has great post titled "Everything I Needed to Know About Science I Didn't Learn in High School." Go there and read it if you haven't already. There are 2 things this brings up in my mind. The first is science education in high schools. There are billions of high schools in the United States, each with its own mission statement on how and what science should be taught.

Brian's point was that science education in high school did not prepare him for college-level science. My own personal experience is similar, but unlike Brian I never once gave a thought to being a scientist as a high school student. It was the furthest thing from my mind. Instead, I focused on plotting my path to rockstardom. Haven't heard of me? Haven't seen my video on MTv? Yeah, I didn't quite make it...

Memories of my class titled "Basic Science" have more to do with messing around and writing poetry, not conducting experiments or learning basic concepts. The other science class I took was Chemistry, which I barely passed to fulfill requirements for 2 years of science courses. Lets just say that by the end of the year our virgin instructor resigned and moved away somewhere. I was neither inspired by nor educated in science when I received my diploma. How I became a scientist is still a mystery to me to this day.

The second interesting point was about the price disparity between "real" science books and pseudo-science books. Many bloggers have pointed to recent examples of poor or misleading science writing. Yet, as a current job seeker with an extensive and broad background in science, I am unable to get a job in science journalism/writing because I do not have a journalism background. Apparently, it is unimportant to know anything in depth about science to write about it for a profession, with the rare exception of established individuals of course.

As Brian is knee-deep into writing his own popular science book, I understand this is probably heavy on his mind. I have also outlined the chapters for a popular science book I hope to start writing once I sort of particulars of my life. His comment is:

"It may not be representative of trends as a whole, but I couldn't help but notice that a new copy of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution costs about half as much as new books about evolution like Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish; it's cheaper to pick up a piece of pseudoscience than a book about one of the most interesting recent finds in evolutionary biology. I doubt that we'll ever reach a point where good popular science books are distributed for free but I think that there does need to be a greater consciousness of how things like price can affect how widely science books are read."

CAN WE HAVE FREE SCIENCE BOOKS?

Good science writing is a skill and a service. As such, it should be possible to make money for this endeavor. I do not mean getting rich, but livable wages. If books are free how can a writer, and publisher, makes a livable wage? One roadblock may be in convincing granting agencies that it is in the public's interest to have easily accessible science books that are guaranteed to be inspiring, informative and entertaining. If educators and politicians are truly concerned about the decline of US science and math with respect other western countries, then this may be an investment worth exploring.

Is it possible for foundations, non-profits, government agencies and the like to fork over grant money for book proposals? Agencies can put out calls for proposals to write about aspects of their funded research (or have open calls). Additionally, inclined investigators can include funds in research grants for outreach via books. This can be done by the investigator or to fund a science writer interested in their research, or perhaps to support a graduate student in science journalism/english under the auspices of a co-advisor in that department. In particular, there are many benefits to the last approach. A graduate student in journalism or english could be co-advised by an advisors in science and journalism/english. A year of support from the scientist's grant to carry out all literature research, interviews and gathering of materials necessary to write a book about an area of mutual interest with the scientist. The rest of the student's support can be gained through teaching assistants or fellowships through the journalism/english program. Is there something like this in place somewhere?

To reduce the costs of popular science books, or to make them free, and increase their accessibility by printing them online or as a downloadable pdf file. This makes books open access (OA) and free to anyone a la PLoS/BMC. Perhaps PLoS or BMC could start an OA book publishing service. But the question still remains how an individual or organisation can profit, or at the very least have all expenses paid, from creating and publishing free/at cost popular science books. The author pay to publish scheme would certainly not attract many freelance authors. There is also the question of using other people's content for profit, such as photographs.

The only way I can see this happening is if science writers are able to secure grants to cover salary and expenses while writing a book. Anyone else have any thoughts or ideas?

Squid-i-licious

It's a bright and squidly day!

DSN reports the catching of a giant squid stalking orange roughy trawlers. Ok, so it wasn't stalking the trawler it was actually caught in a fisherman's net)

Yesterday, Florence from Te Papa was kind enough to let us know that the lectures from the Colossal Squid event earlier this month were available. Due to copyright issues some of the lectures are unavailable, but there are two video lectures and one audio only piece:

• Dr. Steve O'Shea
• Dr. Eric Warrant and Dr. Dan-Eric Nilsson
• Dr. O'Shea on Science Express (mp3)
  

The last hours of the webcast are also available in case you missed it before.

Please, Smart People Reproduce!! I Beg You!

This prophecy movie is chilling in the reality that became evident in the 2000 elections. Its just a small step downwards, but if each election we slip downwards a small step, over many elections we end up dumber than we were 10, 20, 50 years ago. We've done our part here at The Other 95%. Mike, Eric and I have all reproduced.

We are calling for a rejuvenation of the scientifically literate populace! Do your duty and reproduce! Now, have at it.

Great Barrier Reef Coloring Book

Dover Publications has the best deal on the net for coloring books! For $3.95 plus S&H you can get 32 pages of underwater reef pleasure! Who says the blue-ringed octopus (below) has to have blue rings? Why not lemon, or dirt brown (to signify where you will be buried should you touch it)? Stocked full with corals, nudibranchs, and oh yeah, those swimming vertebrate things that Mike the traitor likes, this coloring book will be sure to inspire your little ocean diver! Just look at the pretty coral on the cover. Its too bad those blobby orange stripey things are in the way.

Click image to view in original context.

Hat tip to Michael Barton, FCD.

The World of Entomologists

Want to study bugs? Make sure you look at this public service announcement first!

Hat tip to SALP and the Penn State Entomology Department.

Calamari Thermal Gradient

So exactly how long does it take to thaw out a 495kg squid?

That is a good question. A few relevant details are that the thawing tank is a 10,000 Litre salt water tank. The 8m long squid is currently frozen in a block of ice.

Well it turns out that the best estimate by the folks at Te Papa were a little bit off from the original estimate due to a miscalculation of the amount of ice surrounding the squid. Still, they have adapted their schedule and as my Environmental Reaction and Transport Professor constantly reminds us, "What's a factor of two or three between friends?"

Follow all the developments and links to webcasts and webarchives at the Te Papa blog.