Fig. 1. Way to go Washington, so redelicious! Kind of phoning it in Wyoming,
don't you think? Did you really even have to try to win that one?
Then the better news:
Fig. 2. Dang, Washington, you invaded! Also, Michiganders!
Get with it and EAT THE CARP!
HA! It turns out I live in the best place in the country to study invasive snails! Ima go do that, right now, or maybe just wait til Monday when the tide is better.
Figure 1. What a wacky looking clam!!
Photo Credit: Mehmet Atatur
Figure 2. Yup, wacky from this angle too!
Right, so the radness of the shell alone (Figs 1 & 2) is pretty much enough coolness for this tautonym to stand on, but there is so much more to Hippopus hippopus (Disambiguation: Did you mean "Hiphopopotamus"?) that makes it cool. And for that we need to see a picture of it in situ, up close:
Figure 3. Open live H. hippopus, looking even wackier
Go closer...
Figure 4. Siphon and wacky mantle tissue.
Photo Credit: Artesub.com
Closer still...
Figure 5. Extreme Close-up. Reflective proteins in mantle tissue of Tridacna
Micrograph Credit: Griffiths et al. 1992
Figure 6. Dinoflagellates (non-algae algae) of the genus Symbiodinium.
They live in giant clam flesh!
There! Living right in the mantle tissues of these Giant Clams are dinoflagellates (1), phytoplankton of the genus Symbiodinium. The genus name kind of says it all. These wiggly bulbous photophiles have a symbiotic relationship with the clams whereby they use sunlight to produce carbohydrates, which the clam then eats, and in return, they get a stable habitat in which to live and drink up the sun. Free-living dinoflagellates, like all plankton, are at the mercy of the tides and currents and can get forced down to a depth beyond which they can obtain sufficient light to photosynthesize (= bitty dinoflagellates, wasting away). By paying a bit of rent in the form of sugar to the clam, symbiotic dinoflagellates are assured that they will not be sucked into the deep.
Ok, so that's cool enough, but not unique. This is roughly the same symbiosis as corals and our own local Anthopleura anemones (see really, really ... really cool research at Western on climate change and symbiosis).
But! What I learned just this week at a talk by Alison Sweeney (2) was that not only do the clams have algae all up in their skin, but they apparently also modify their own mantle tissue feed more dinoflagellates, and thereby get more sugar. They're farmers! The iridescence you see in the mantle (Figure 4) is generated by iridocytes, cells with organized proteins all stacked up (Figure 5). What are the iridocytes for? There are a number of ideas that have been considered, including protecting the dinoflagellates from exposure to too much sun, which can cause chemical stress on both dinos and clams.
However, modelling and experiments done by Dr. Sweeney and friends indicate that proteins in iridocytes forward scatter wavelengths of light that are useful in photosynthesis, deeper into the clam than it would otherwise go. This is good news for the dinoflagellates and the clam (more light -> more photosynthesis for more dinoflagellates -> more candy for the clams!). However, the iridocytes backscatter the other wavelengths (like green), so we see green iridescence. So, it's possible that the clam uses iridocytes to improve their dinoflagellate husbandry.
Dang, clam, you pretty and smart!
References and miscellany:
(1) Pedantic note about pronunciation of this word: Neigh on a decade ago, it was STRONGLY emphasized to me by Greg Teegarden who learned it from his Academic forefathers/mothers that "Dinoflagellates" is pronounced "DEE-no" NOT "DYE-no". The former is derived from Greek meaning "rotation", referring to the transverse flagellum that causes these guys to spin, while the latter signifies the Greek word "deinos", meaning "terrible" - like Dinosaur = "terrible lizard". It seems to me that these are spinning, but not terrible, flagellates.
(2) Most official website I could find for Dr. Sweeney, this is from Duke where she did her Ph.D. Currently at UCSB Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, headed to Penn Physics this fall. She has also done lots of work on coloring and iridesence and optic stuff in cephalopods.
Dang, Sally, you pretty!
The whimsically named and colored Grapsus grapsus.
John Steinbeck will undoubtedly provide a much more interesting perspective on this whimsically named (in both Latin and common) Grapsus grapsus than I ever could. So, I leave it to him to describe this tropical member of the Grapsid family:
Man reacts peculiarly but consistently in his relationship with Sally Lightfoot. His tendency eventually is to scream curses, to hurl himself at them, and to come up foaming with rage and bruised all over his chest. Thus, Tiny, leaping forward, slipped and fell and hurt his arm. He never forgot nor forgave his enemy. From then on he attacked Lightfoots by every foul means he could contrive and a training in Monterey street fighting has equipped him well for this kind of battle. He hurled rocks at them; he smashed at them with boards; and he even considered poisoning them. Eventually we did catch a few Sallys, but we think they were the halt and the blind, the simpletons of their species. With reasonably well-balanced and non-neurotic Lightfoots we stood no chance.
-The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)(1)
Hit Parade:
Grapsus grapsus have been reported to remove the ticks from marine iguanas - how thoughtful, AND delicious!(2)
Here is an educational video in Portuguese, complete with whimsical music. I certainly do not speak this language, but it's pretty footage and I do think I recognized the phrase "voracious predator". If anyone wants to offer a translation of the narration...
Our most common local Grapsids are Hemigrapsus oregonensis and Hemigrapsus nudus, which can be found on almost any salty beach around town, scuttling away from overturned rocks. My dog Jay used to think they were little chicken nuggets with legs.
References and miscellany:
(1) A highly, highly, recommended read. I enjoyed being reminded that I missed the golden days of ocean exploration and could still pretend I was doing reading for "work" by learning about beasties along distant coasts.
(2) Beebe, W. (1924). Galapagos: World's End. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
As it's at least supposed to be a molluscan marine blog it seemed worthy to start (1) with a redundant local marine mollusk. Unfortunately, it turns out that very few, if any, tautonomical invertebrates are native to the Pacific Northwest (2). So why not a non-native? It turns out this one is also my very, very favorite tautonym.
Figure 1. Peterson (of field guide fame) refers to G. gemma as, "a handsome ... clam, easily overlooked because of its small size". Just so, sir. Just so.
Photo Credit: Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Melissa Wong.
In addition to being the name of my wireless network, Gemma gemma (3) is the diminutive Amethyst Gem clam (Disambiguation). These tiny bivalves are native to the east and Gulf coasts of North America, from Nova Scotia to Texas. They were introduced along the west coast of the US around 1960, but have only recently become very abundant in San Francisco Bay - but hey, what hasn't these days?! Am I right, folks?! (<---- NOTE: That was an excellent/horrible invasive species joke. Insert rim shot here ... plz.)
But seriously...
Ted Grosholz (UC Davis) tried to figure out why the gem clam population didn't really take off until decades after it was actually introduced (4). It looks like the gem clam populations used to be held in check by competition (Figure 2) with native clams of the genus Nutricola (which I'm pretty sure are referred to as "Nut" clams).
Figure 2. Schematic depicting San Francisco Bay pre-Green Crab Invasion (5). Native Nutricola spp. (Pink, Yellow, and White individuals) originally kept non-native Gemma gemma (Green individual) at low abundances by eating up all of the food (phytoplankton represented by dinoflagellates, chain-forming and pennate diatoms and coccolithophores) leaving only scraps for poor G. gemma.
Gem clams were kept at such low abundances that they were not, apparently, worthy of much notice or concern. That is, until the arrival of the [non-whimsically named] European green crab, Carcinus maenas, which came to SF bay as a stow-away in the late 1980's. The invasive crab, embracing the gastronomic culture of its host country, prefers to eat the biggest thing is can get its little green claws on, which in SF bay is the native Nutricola spp. The tiny gem clams get overlooked - lucky Gemma gemma devils! That means no more selfish native clams hogging all the delicious phytoplankton (Figure 3)! Time for tiny gem clams to make tiny gem babies!
Figure 3. My, how the tables have turned! Schematic representing San Francisco Bay post-Green crab invasion. Crabs (lower left) preferentially consume native Nutricola spp. (lonely yellow individual), freeing up more food for non-native gem clams (prolific green individuals) to make gem babies!
Cool, huh?! In many cases like this one, non-native species are present at low abundances for years after they are introduced, leading people to be all like, "ohhhhhhh....whateverrrr...it's no big deallll...I mean, who cares about some dumb clam anyway..." And then something changes. Maybe the non-native population develops a key adaptation that enables it to make more babies than before, or something else in the environment frees up resources (*cough, cough* I'm looking at you C. maenas), and the population of the non-native explodes and messes things up for EVERYONE. And people are all like, "whaaa!? But how could we have known!?" And I'm all like, "because it happens every time!" Well, not every time, but surprisingly often.
So called "lag times" are a pretty common property of biological invasions, and one extremely good reason that, notwithstanding any aesthetic arguments(6) for the moral equivalence of human and non-human invasions, all introductions of non-native species deserve to be treated with caution.
References and miscellany: (1) Yes "start" more than a month later, this is the first second species species of the week week. I did warn the one of you that reads this that these would be irregular and unlikley to actually appear on a weekly basis. (2) I'm tempted do some arm waving here about how this probably has something to do with the idea that the tautonym species are so-named because they were the first of the genus to be described, and most of the marine genera in the PNW were first described in Europe or the east coast of North America. But that arm waving will only appear in small print in the foot notes. (3) On the pronunciation of Gemma gemma: "gemma" comes from Latin for "jewel". I assume it SHOULD be a hard G if you're being true to Latin pronunciation, but I have only ever heard it pronounced with a soft G, presumably in honor of the common name - which also pretty much comes from Latin for "jewel" but has since been bastardized. (4) Grosholz, E., (2005) PNAS. 102(4): 1088. (5) If you have to look this game up, and don't have age as an excuse, your childhood was misspent. (6) Drew Christie is a great Seattle animator and illustrator whose work I actually really like, but this piece got under my skin (really really far under my skin), for making a tenuous aesthetic (but it's cute!) and moral (humans are invasive too, who are we to point the finger?!) argument that manipulates feelings about a legitimate conservation issue.
Congratulations to me: I’m a mom, well an Auntie
anyway. In addition to being a real Auntie of the incomparable, amazing, accomplished, Margaret (incidentally,
about to fete the completion of her first year), I have recently also become Auntie hundreds
of times over. Unfortunately, the number
of times over that I am an Auntie is now rapidly diminishing as my molluscan
nieces and nephews eat each other.
Whoops.
And except for the cannibalism, I couldn't be prouder! Actually the cannibalism is kind of cool, too, so maybe I just couldn't be prouder! Now, like any self respecting Auntie, I will subject hapless friends and strangers to stories, photos, and videos of my nieces and nephews doing THE MOST AMAZING THINGS! Because even though they are invasive brats (don't worry, I'm being responsible), they are the most amazing snails ever in the history of snails, because they are MY nieces and nephews.
This is video of one of the baby snails (Ocinebrina inornata) I am responsible for flipping itself over. So you're looking from above at an upside-down snail under a dissecting scope (~10x), which is why the plane of focus is so narrow. I am unable to tell you whether this particular snail is responsible for the death of any siblings, but chances are that she (or he) is. But, isn't that AMAZING? MY snail just flipped itself over!
Backstory: GO! About this time last year, I undertook cultivation of a
laboratory colony of snails that could star in my dissertation research. I’ll maybe talk more about why sometime later...
maybe. But the point is: I grow snails
now.
And in the case of my pseudo-offspring, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and my snails are
a bit, well, poorly socialized. As I
mentioned, they eat their kin.
But, in their defense, it’s not entirely their fault. In my defense, the fratricide was not my
idea. It turns out, it is not unheard of
for some species to practice sibling cannibalism before and after birth.
Sand tiger shark pups consume all the siblings in their
mother’s womb, until only one pup remains. Witness:
Cannibalism at this stage can be a strategy for increasing the success of
surviving offspring. The strongest
individuals in a given brood, by consuming the weaker ones, get more food and grow more before birth/hatching etc. This increases the chance they will survive being a tiny shark alone in the world without wasting the energy that mom expended in making those other
babies, or having to compete with annoying siblings later in life.
Similarly, some snails are also known to get an early
start on the predatory lifestyle while still in their mommy’s egg capsule. These snails lay egg capsules (see below) that are
attached to a hard surface. Each capsule
has a variable number of fertilized eggs in it, and a number of unfertilized
“nurse eggs” or “trophic eggs”. Snails
will go through their larval development while still in the capsule, and feed
off these trophic eggs until they are competent to hatch out as perfect lil’
mini snails. It’s hard to tell in the
case of these snails if they restrict their diet to the trophic eggs, or maybe
occasionally slip and eat one of their siblings (or half-siblings). In 1949 (old references are the best/worst to
read), researchers at the Washington Dept of Fish and Wildlife counted
(COUNTED!) an average of 1,543 eggs in each egg case, estimating that only 1%
begin development, and even fewer make it to hatchin’ time.
Fambly Photo Album!
Here's some photo evidence from the crime scene. DESCRIPTION AND DISCLAIMER: These were taken with some dirty optics and poor lighting, sorry. Also it was kind of difficult to determine whether focus was achieved until too late. But you're looking through about 10x magnification on a dissecting scope. I aspire to higher quality at some point, but this is all you get for now.
Early Life History Crime scene: A single egg capsule laid by Ocinebrina inornata, some of the juveniles have already hatched out as you can see the capsule is open at the top (left).
OH NO! Snail casualty! That gaping hole in this baby snail shell is telltale evidence of sibling cannibalism, the portal by which a brother or sister suckedthisguysgutsout! This dude is about 0.5mm long. Note also that, when the hatch out, the snails first have this smooth white shell with a not very pointy top. To learn why read: The Ballad of The Veliger.
This one is a survivor! Slightly older, this snail is perched on the edge of a barnacle many times his (or her) size. As they grow and add new whorls, the snails, even though they are tiny (~2mm), really start to look like mini adults.
Old habits die hard, apparently, because the winners keep on
chowing on their buddies after they leave their egg cases. I’ve seen a lot of my babies go this way, and
it’s sad. I do my best to make sure they
have enough non-sibling nourishment so they won’t be tempted into
recidivism. I’ve been told the best
thing to feed them is extremely young barnacles, ones that have just settled
out of the plankton. Unfortunately, the
timing is off this year, and I have plenty of adult barnacles, and some
appropriately sized baby mussels. I
think they can tell that Auntie’s finger wagging just doesn’t carry the same
authority as an actual parent, and my efforts at discipline and redirection aren’t
working. So let’s hope for the sake of
my research that this is just a phase.
I have been told, and I shall not say by whom, that the
scientific name (1) for the green sea urchin
is the longest currently assigned.
Weighing in at 32 letters, I present:
Strongylocentrotus
droebachiensis
Ta-da! Oh, to bear the weight of so many syllables! (credit: enature.com)
Now I don’t know if this claim is merely intertidal
boosterism, but I do know that is a long name and it’s not immediately clear
how one would know the pronunciation without initiation into a secret society (hint: "STRON-JUH-LO-SEN-TRO-TUS
DRO-BAK-EE-EN-SUS").
In addition to being a marine nerd, I’m also a word nerd,
and I dig on the etymology of how organisms are named and described by their scientific
name, in part because it’s both lyrical and logical. Just removed enough from common usage to make
you feel like you are gaining insight into the natural world just by
knowing the “true” name. Scientists avoid
using common names because, Buff thighed puffley notwithstanding, these names are often vague, and are either shared by
several species, or are only one of a list of names for a single species.
However, the Genus species approach, AKA
binomial nomenclature, though, perhaps, more precise, still only gives you a
false sense of security that you know the true identity of an organism. Scientific names are more dynamic that you would
expect, as scientists move species into new genera believed to more accurately
reflect their evolutionary history. One
of the snails I study is Ocinebrina
inornata, but has variously been known as Tritonalia japonica, Ocinebrellus inornatus and is still identified
by the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife as Ceratostoma inornatum (2).
Names are also logical - mostly. True, some are named after people, those who
discovered them, those who were/are influential in the field, or those who were
important to the scientist in a more personal way. But, more typically, the name tells a story about the organism, what it
looks like, where it lives, or what it does.
Take the cumbersome sea urchin moniker.
According to a similarly word nerdy blogger:
Strongylo = round, centrotus = spiky, droebach = Drobak, Norway, where the
organism was first described.
Now for the Whimsey...
One of the types of names I am especially tickled by is
double genus species names, where the name of the species is the same as the
genus. The poster child of double names,
of course, is Gorilla gorilla. Come on, say it out loud. It’s a little bit whimsical, isn’t it?! Imagine applying that to people names. My last name is Grason and my parents joked
about naming their firstborn son, my older brother, Grayson, so he would be
Grayson Grason (same pronunciation).
What would you do if you met Grayson Grason? Then again, maybe you already know folks that
do have double names.
This is not at all to make light of someone who might have
the same first and last name. In fact, I
think of these organisms and people as the “type” specimen, the realized
Platonic ideal of its kind, by comparison to which the entire group is defined. Grayson Grason is the Grason-iest Grason. Is Gorilla
gorilla the gorilla-est member of the genus Gorilla. Is that really how you
spell “Gorilla”? I’ve now been staring at it too long to tell. Incidentally, according to Wikipedia (I know, my sources are unimpeachable),
the name “gorilla” was derived from Greek meaning “tribe of hairy women” –
lovely.
"Tribe of hairy women"? You decide.
So, what’s the deal? Did these folks run out of steam? Well if a new species being named (3) is the only member of a
genus, you could imagine it might end up with the same species as genus
name. But this isn’t always the
case. There are two species in the genus
Gorilla for instance, so I would
guess that G. gorilla came
first. I fully admit, I’m more
interested in the names themselves than in speculating about, or spending much
time doing research on, the origin of this naming trend.
And so, here, with Gorilla
gorilla, I mark the official launch of a [mostly irregular] series called
Species species of the Week week
in which you can look forward to a highlight of some double named
organism that has caught my fancy. Certainly
it won’t be weekly, and they won’t all be marine, but they will be cool. I’d also love to hear what other people’s favorites
are.
Yup, footnotes. I'm the David Foster Wallace of the Marine Ecology Blogosphere
1. You will perhaps recall from 9th grade biology, the scientific name consists of the two most (commonly used) specific taxonomic levels of classification - genus and species name for that organism, written as: Genus species. Just remember that King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti. 2. This makes it extremely difficult to find previous research on organisms because you’re never quite certain that there isn’t another synonym that you don’t know about. 3. There are a lot of rules for this sort of thing these days, no more naming things after yourself.
This post closes the loop on my promise to write about TWO Scientistas back in October for Ada Lovelace Day. Get off my back, man, I said I'd do it! Just kidding, absolutely no one but me is actually concerned about whether or not I write this post. Except maybe my reader in Russia! Google tells me that I have three views on Rah Rah Radula from Russia. Probably it's just someone phishing for my credit card number. They'll probably succeed, but in the meantime maybe learn something about snails and science. SUCKERS!
Part II: Sharon Strauss and More Swoonage
So, recalling that Ada Lovelace Day is all about inspirational women in STEM fields, I'd like to call your attention to Sharon Strauss. Now, I have a bad habit of letting my first impressions get the best of me. I first paper-met her when I read a review she wrote with colleagues at UC Davis about how native species evolve in response to introduced species. This is undeniably a cool topic. To give you just a taste of what's going on out there:
Witness the Black Snake of Australia
Figure 1. Witness! Are you Witnessing? You better be! This handsome devil, helpfully demonstrating "gape-limited predation" is Pseudechis porphyriacus.
The Black Snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus, is native to Australia, where it preys on anything smaller than it's head (witness Figure 1), rodents, amphibians, whathaveyou. Wait did I just say amphibians?! In Australia?! That's right, Ima talk about CANE TOADS!!! For those of you who haven't watched the never. -ending. parade. ofdocumentiaries. about this particular poster-child of biological invasions, cane toads were introduced to the continent-cum-island to control cane beetles in 1935. The beetles were accidentally introduced earlier and were problematic for the sugar cane growers. Folks thought the toads (incidentally Bufo marinus) would solve their problem by eating the cane beetles. But toads found everything else in Australia much tastier. So cane toads became super abundant without solving the beetle problem. In addition to eating everything except what they were supposed to, they also killed native things that ate them, because they secrete a toxin (witness Figure 2) when they are threatened or have road rage (it's ALL about inducible defenses people!).
Figure 2. Oh gross, that white stuff is bufotoxin and this toad is MAD!
So black snakes were eating cane toads and dying from actual food poisoning. But!...BUT! It appears that in approximately 23 generations of snakitude, this species has not only evolved increased resistance to the toxin (Phillips and Shine 2006), they also have evolved smaller heads (Phillips and Shine 2004). What?! Smaller heads?! That's dumb. No, smaller heads for a gape-limited predator means you can only eat smaller toads. Smaller toads make less toxin. Pinhead snakes eating small toads live to pass on their pinhead genes to the next pinhead generation. EVOLUTION: WIN!
Anyway, that's way cool, but let's get back to the point
Shocking Upshot: I got really excited about this paper and this concept. Evolution happens so fast, and humans can cause it and we can see the effects! So, naturally, the author was elevated to Science Goddess status. But my hasty opinion of Sharon Strauss was formed on one paper only. Last spring, as part of an ecology seminar, I reviewed and presented on a larger portion of her corpus, and you can imagine how much higher Sharon rocketed in my esteem (hint: way higher) when I realized how broad her research was (hint: pretty, pretty broad, witness the breadth of Figure 3).
Figure 3. Portrait of Sharon Y. Strauss and Friend.
In addition, and I wish ESA hadn't removed or archived this information because it will not have the same impact if I just tell you about it, she wrote this great piece in a profile about the joy of doing science that serves our curiosity. Or at least that was what I took away from it, so it's entirely possible I'm getting this wrong or projecting. I'm pretty sure it was something along those lines anyway. My point is that my perception of Sharon Strauss is that she approaches not only the content of science thoughtfully, as demonstrated by the strength of her research program, but also the act of doing science, the living of a scientific life, of training more scientists. If that sounds a bit grandiose, that's because it's how that makes me feel. This is, I think, how we all start out, as scientists and/or students, but something we quickly lose sight of when we get bogged down in logistics of funding and politics of publication. Or even before then when we have to cram so much knowledge into our heads because we are studying for qualifying exams and trying to remember why we thought this was a good idea in the first place and what do you with all this information that you don't have a context in which to placeand didn't I learn all this before and why don't I remember it, it's a good thing I'm learning it now because I'll definitely remember it this time NO I'll never remember it it's too much and I don't even know what they're going to ask me I will definitely embarrass myself horribly in front of my committee and my life will be OVER!
Like many other passions one turns into a career, you can at least imagine how one might lose track of why one does Science when one is panicked about doing Science very well. For me, Sharon Strauss was a timely reminder about big-picture thinking. Inspirational scientists (and all scientists for that matter) aren't only about good science - lots of people do good science. They are about doing good science with grace and generosity.
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