Babies eatin' babies OR Auntie Pride

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.

Species species of the Week week #1 OR The Whimsey of Nomenclature

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 9^th 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.

Scientistas of the World Part II OR More Swoonage

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. of documentiaries. 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 place and 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!


...


OK. So that happened. Sorry.


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.  

Eat the Carp! OR Invasion semantics

My friend Nick sent me a copy of this, which is currently displayed in the National Archives as part of an exhibit on  food.  Released by the US Department of Commerce in 1911.  I love ancient Swedish recipes!

This blog is all over the place!  Today's digression is non-native species, which is really not so much a digression as my meat and potatoes - freal, I don't eat meat, but potatoes (family: Solanaceae) are native to the Andes.  

Non-Native "!=" Invasive

I'm a nerd, but for those of you who are normal, "!=" is code for "not equal to".  I told you.  Anyway, saying "non-native" instead of "invasive" all the time is admittedly cumbersome, but I am nothing if not a champion for precise language.  Not all plants and animals that are transported to new places become "invasive".  That is not all of them manage to make it through:

The Four Stages of Biological Invasions ... OF SCIENCE!

1. A species gotta get from A to B to invade B.  If you're a pluteus (Geshudheit! Thank you!), you might hitch a ride in ballast water of a commercial ship moving cargo between ports. If you're a starling, you might make friends with an acclimitization society or Shakespeare. But almost invariably, you will need humans to help you move to a new place.

Get on the bus, pluteus! (Pluteus = baby sea urchin)

2.  Species gotta make their way in their brave new world.  If you're going to be a good invader, you need to be able to find food and ultimatley make lots of new baby invaders to help you invade, otherwise you're on your own.  Here's hoping your new home is just as cozy as your old one!  If you're a real goldilocks, and everything is just too hot, or too cold, or too salty, or too nitrogen-poor, I hate to break it to you, but you're just not going to be a good invader.

3. Now starts the conquering! If you've made it through the first two stages, good on ya, now comes the fun part: GO FORTH! SPREAD! Expand your range! Conquer new territory! The world is your oyster!  Often, in the case of invasive species is this literally true.  Charles Elton was a rad old school ecologist and one of the first to think extensively about species translocations.  Way ahead of his time he said,

 “The greatest agency of all that spreads marine animals to new corners of the world must be the business of oyster culture.”

DUDE! You didn't even know how right you were Dr. Elton! No, you probably did because you were absurdly smart.  I may have told you this story already, but when oyster growers used to bring oysters to new areas to try to expand their market, they often just ripped up big chunks of oyster bed and ship it across the country/ocean/etc.  If you've ever spent 5 seconds on an oyster bed, you know how many other things hide in the spaces between oysters.  So these folks also unintentionally moved lots of other critters with the oysters.  It's a sweet deal for these critters, because not only do they get their home (oyster reef) moved with them, they also get humans to take care of their home for them!  And then when you're ready, you can light out for the territory and conquer new oyster beds and other habitats!


4. Mess some $%!^&* up! Now is your chance to eat whatever looks good to you in your new home, and force other native inhabitants to leave theirs.  Take what you want, leave a mess, and NEVER APOLOGIZE!  It's just your survival imperative that compels you to wreak havok (hmm. This sounds a lot like the MO of western civilization, but that is another conversation for another day). If you are to be an ideal invader, you will find some way to cost humans money.


So the point is that not all introduced [non-native] species become invasive.  In fact - very few do.  It turns out it's kind of hard to survive 20 days in a dark ballast tank and many don't make it.  Of those that do, only a few ever manage to establish self-sustaining populations once they arrive. Even fewer are able to expand their range: gardeners will tell you how frustrated they get trying to keep their non-native plants alive. 


Interestingly, there are many that do meet all the criteria to be considered "invasive", but we like them anyway, so we don't want to hurt their feelings by calling them names - Pacific oysters, for example.  They're not native to the west coast of North America, but they were introduced to start a fishery for them here.  They spawn liberally (hippies!) and have established reefs "in the wild".  They can outcompete rare native oysters (Buhle and Ruesink, J. Shellfish Rsch 2009) but we still like them because they are commercially valuable.  So we call them "non-native" because it's true but sounds less judgmental.  


Don't get me wrong: Semantic "!=" Trivial


But here's a species that is, without a doubt, invasive:


Featured Invader of the Day: Asian Carp!

Look at 'em go! Asian carp are super-abundant in the Mississippi River

There are several species of Asian carp that have made it through the gauntlet, and are considered invasive in the US. Here's how they did it:


1. Be introduced (Check): Imported to the states for aquaculture. *Maybe* escaped during floods and hurricanes in the 1990's (apocryphal)


2. Establish yourself (Check!): Made lots of babies in the Mississippi river (see picture above)


3. Expand your range (CHECK!): Are spreading upriver toward the Great Lakes, terrifying the good folks of those waters to such an extent that electric barriers have been erected to keep them out.  But DNA collected from the waters above the barriers indicate that the fish keep on busting through!


4. Impact the environments and human enterprise (Check): Probably outcompete other native fish by being very big eaters.  They eat so much plankton, there's not enough left for other fishes.  ALSO, they are evidently a safety hazard to boaters.  Anyway, people dislike and want to get rid of them.

Eat the Carp!

It wouldn't be a PNW blog without a post about Orcas!

Huzzah! Another reason to fete the season!  Puget Sound welcomes a new addition to J-Pod.

Figure 1. HEY BABY ORCA! Calves are often born orange,
which is cool.

This orange fellow is the son or daughter (often takes a while to sort that out) of J-16 (AKA Slick).  

I love that I live in a place where every time a new orca calf is spotted, it makes news headlines.  There is no shortage of orcas worldwide, but the population that lives closest to Puget Sound, the Southern Residents (Urban Orcas, I like to imagine they follow the trends and have transitioned from grunge to hipster - Figure 2) have been listed as an endangered species.  They are primarily fish-eaters and have different dialects than the mammal-eating transients that also come through the Salish Sea on occasion.  

Figure 2. You try to put a whale in skinny jeans! It's not what nature intended.

J-pod was always my favorite in my Free Willy years.  J-17 (Princess Angeline) was my adopted orca.  Whoops, busted: I had a Free Willy/Keiko phase.  Whatever, I have no regrets!  It turns out orcas are rad, but not in the way Sea World would like you to believe.  Speaking of which, do not try this at home - just don't.  I shouldn't have to tell you why.

I still really love orcas because they do not care what we think of them, and what images we like to project on them (see again, Figure 2).  They will still kill them a great white shark or some baby sea lions, right in front of us, if it please them.  The Southern Residents are beloved, which is easy because they eat mostly fish.  But most orcas, world-wide, eat things we think are cute and defenseless, and they get depicted in nature shows with some very choice, and very alliterative, language.  But they are incredibly smart!  And that's extremely cool!  Ignore most of the dramatics and graphics in this video, except the reaction in the crowd at the end - and then lets talk about how we felt when the orcas got that baby seal (Oh, Animal Planet, how fast and far ye have fallen).  

In other local orca news:  The latest fashion in Orca research happens right here in my own department: Dogs that hunt for whale scat!

"More than Meets the Claw" OR "How Emily Ruined Christmas with Snails"

Thanks Santa Oyster Drill! This is the best Christmas EVAR!

Every year when I was growing up, I asked for a pony for Christmas.  Never sincerely, of course, because those things are heinously expensive.  But the request was good for a laugh/groan - I am the youngest and my "jokes" were probably humored to excess (this might explain why I have a blog).  My parents were always extremely generous in supporting my horse habit, but since ownership was out of the budget, instead there would be a joke about the pony not fitting in the garage, or some miscommunication and Santa thought I meant a pony ornament, etc.  

This year I got my metaphorical pony - in the form of a

 First.

-Authored.

Publication.  

True, it hasn't been on my list as long as the pony, but I asked Santa SO HARD for a first-authored publication.  Theodore and his brothers ain't got nothin' on my Christmas wishin'.  Now entered into the prestigious Annals of Never Again Cited Research:

That's right! Grason and Miner (2010) just got all up in your face! It's such a big deal it doesn't even fit in the column.  It's still only available on Online First, but will appear in print sometime next year (and get it's very own volume and page numbers! eeeeee!).  

Since many of you won't have access to the full text (open access is not free, my friends), I'll summarize.  In the spirit of the season, and with only minimal apologies for ruining Christmas for everyone, here is:

Emily's Christmas Pageant

The Ecology of Fear: Rudolph Redux

Act I: Two kinds of invasive snails (here depicted as Rudolph) eat fewer oysters (here depicted as a little tree Rudolph was inevitably going to otherwise eat) and hide more when they smell native crabs (here, the Abominable Snowman) eating their brethren.   Merry Christmas to oysters!

Where is Yukon Cornelius when you need him?!

Act II, Scene 1: One kind of snail (only one tested) responds strongly even if it only detects smashed up brethren (no crabs around).

I'm only a little sorry if the graphic nature of this offends you.  Nature doesn't
really worry itself about your childhood memories.  Nature is for real.

Act II, Scene 2: But that snail also does respond to the native crab even when no bretheren are involved.

INTERMISSION

(to soothe the crying kiddos)

Act 3: Neither kind of snail responds less when there are more live brethren around to share the risk (see post on the ecology of awesomeness for more detail on why this matters).

Nothing like killing off the most cherished Christmas symbol to put you in the Holiday spirit!  I'm evidently feeling punchy today. 

Speaking of punchy, I wanted to title this paper, "More than Meets the Claw: Behavioral plasticity... blah blah blah".  I thought this was  a clever reference to the fact that without actually eating the snails, crabs can change the ecological dynamics in the system (more oysters, yay!), and to a popular 80's cartoon.  Academia has a different take on clever, so I went with a more direct title (*cough, cough, SELLOUT!*).  

In all seriousness, I am much indebted to my former advisor and co-author, Ben Miner for telling me to stick to my guns as long as was reasonable and then maybe figure out how to be flexible and take recommendations from the reviewers.  I joke when I say this publication came from Santa, I made this happen with the quixotic tenacity peculiar to junior graduate students.  This was not an easy process, and took about 18 months from the time of first submission.  I would have given up waaaay sooner if not for Ben, or maybe just submitted it to Veliger.  


First: Oecologia, then: THE WORLD!

Wishing y'all happy holidaysmas2011!

Other things Radular OR The bus is a caterpillar and it threw up

I am phoning it in twice today, but hopefully providing the radula-philic among you with new ways to waste time.  

"DO NOT stand under this structure in the event of an earthquake."

Thing the first: Accessible science

People keep telling scientists that they should blog to make their science more accessible to "the public".  But sometimes the science blogs I read are really only for scientists - splenic commentary or response to other work that (perhaps rightly) doesn't inform anyone.  This is a bummer.  

As part of a class I am also writing on "The Bill Nye Effect" a blog by a collective of grad students from different departments across UW who want to be better at talking about science.  I think many of us can count Bill Nye as a positive influence, directly or indirectly, on our decisions to do science, so the name is apt.  In a way, Bill Nye should be in my academic family tree (maybe as a Godfather?).  In any case, the blog seems to be evolving into vignettes of life as a science grad student, and has some very fun things to read.  

More on Bill Nye, because once I get started, it's hard to hold back: In all seriousness, this man has done more than almost anyone to convince me that the best way to teach is to let go of ego entirely. His work has been valuable not only in teaching science, but in demonstrating how to teach science.  By the way, have you ever looked at how many great pictures of Bill Nye there are? I have! Here, let me google that for you.  

Thing the second: 2 videos that will change your entire perspective on transportation:

I have already pointed out how behind the times I am when it comes to most things pop-culture.  But this being a gastropod-centric blog, I would be remiss if I didn't spread the gospel of Marcel.  Thanks to Mike "I wish my middle name started with a C" Hammer for filling me in on what I should have known about at least a year ago: