Yesterday I collected three very small Pycnopodia helianthoides stars. When I brought them back to the marine lab I decided to photograph them because with stars this small I could easily distinguish between the original five arms and the new ones:
These guys began their post-larval life with the typical five arms you’d expect from an asteroid. At this stage they are pretty conspicuous because they are the largest arms. The other arms arise in the inter-radial regions between arms. For years now I’ve been wanting to watch juvenile Pycnopodia stars growing their extra arms, and it looks like I finally have my chance. I noted that these stars are all about the same size, but don’t have the same number of arms. It would be interesting to see if the rate of arm appearance and growth is related to how much food the stars have. Hmmm, that sounds like a study I should do.
And then one of the stars started running. And I mean running. Watch:
You might wonder how in the heck they can run so fast, and it’s a valid question. We can actually examine the animal’s scientific name to get an answer. “Pycnopodia” means “dense foot” and “helianthoides” means “sunflower-like.” So these guys have a lot of tube feet, and they use them to run and feed. Imagine how fast we could run if we had more than two feet and could co-ordinate them this well:
So, when these guys (gals?) grow up, they’ll be at least half a meter in diameter with 20-24 arms. With all those tube feet, they’ll be Speedy Gonzales! In fact, they will be the terror of the intertidal–big, fast, and voracious. Anything that can’t get out of their way will be eaten.
We air-breathing land mammals should be grateful that echinoderms never managed to get out of the sea. Can you imagine this monster chasing you down a dark alley, or climbing through your bedroom window?
“Perhaps” being the operative word here. I was up at Davenport Landing the other day to do some collecting, and saw some healthy stars. Alas, no pictures, as I’m not coordinated enough to do photography and collecting on the same trip. But here’s what I saw:
5 healthy Pisaster ochraceus stars. This was the first species to start melting in my seawater table back in September, and they’ve suffered a lot subtidally as well. These five were all at least as big as my outstretched hand, so were several years (decades?) old. They were nice and stiff, unlike the flabby ones that died, and firmly attached to the rocks, indicating that the water vascular system was functioning normally. Yippee!
6 healthy Dermasterias imbricata stars. I haven’t personally observed this species being affected by wasting syndrome, and the stars I saw the other day all looked good. This species as a whole does not have the sticking power of P. ochraceus, but the ones I picked up had the right texture and consistency to make me think they were in good shape.
1 tiny Pycnopodia helianthoides, about the size of my thumbnail. It had 10 arms of various lengths and was very active. I really wished I had my camera when this little guy floated into view on a piece of algae.
So what does this all mean?
Probably not much, in and of itself. This is a single observation at one site on one day. But finding live, healthy stars is a lot more encouraging than seeing only dead or dying stars. The fact that I saw a very small P. helianthoides makes me wonder. Usually at Davenport Landing I see a few hand-sized or larger Pycnopodia stars. . . I saw none the other day, so does that mean they’ve all died? And how old is this little 1-cm star? Did it recruit before or after the wasting event?
I also noticed something else, which may or may not be related to the recent star deaths: Turban snails (Chlorostoma funebralis and C. brunnea) seemed to be more abundant than usual. Also, the C. funebralis, which are typically roughly spherical and the diameter of about a quarter, were larger and had the more slightly conical shape of C. brunnea. Just a coincidence? Hard to say, without quantifiable data, but I’m guessing “Yes.”
Since my earlier posts on Pisaster wasting disease in the lab, I’ve been contacted by a couple of divers who have seen afflicted stars on their dives in Monterey Bay. They have both graciously given me permission to post their photos, which clearly demonstrate that Pisaster and other stars are being stricken subtidally as well as intertidally and in the lab.
This set of photos is from Ralph Wolf, taken on 11 October 2013 off of Pacific Grove, California.
This star, a Pisaster giganteus, looks healthy. It has no dermal lesions, the body is plump and full, and the arms are lying flat and fully attached to the rock.
This P. giganteus, on the other hand, is doing the twisty arm thing that I saw in the lab. It seems to be the precursor to the star ripping its arms off. There’s an orange Patiria miniata lurking in the background, just waiting for a chance to begin feasting on a not-quite-dead-yet sick star.
And it wasn’t just a few isolated Pisaster stars that were showing early signs of the disease. Here are three of them on the same rock, all twisting their arms to some degree.
Pisaster stars were not the only ones that Ralph saw stricken with the disease. The sunflower stars, Pycnopodia helianthoides, were in even worse shape. This star has contorted itself into an almost recognizable shape and lost at least a few arms, one of which is visible at the top of the photo.
And take a look at this poor star. All that remains is the central disc and a single arm. Given that Pycnopodia normally has 20-25 arms, this animal has suffered a huge loss:
So, for now the disease continues to exact its toll. At least this time it appears that Patiria miniata (bat stars) and Dermasterias imbricata (leather stars) are not being sickened, although we have had outbreaks of a very similar disease in the lab that affected these species. And the fact that sick stars are being seen in the field, both intertidally and subtidally, means that the disease I documented in the lab is not strictly a captivity-related phenomenon. I think what we are witnessing is regional–the first report I read about was in British Columbia–rather than local. Only time will tell.
Well, it looks like the end is indeed nigh. That last Pisaster, for whom I held out unreasonable hope for so long, seems to be on its way out. Today it has lost its last two arms, leaving a central disc attached to a single arm:
As bad as it looks, it could be a lot worse. The other stars that disintegrated to this degree were essentially amorphous piles of goo, and this one is still somewhat intact. It also hasn’t gone entirely mushy, so it is somehow maintaining its internal pressure. I’m going to keep it for another day and see how it looks tomorrow.
The other two arms, on the other hand (ha!), were a mess. When I got to the table this afternoon they were both semi-attached and semi-upside down behind one of the quarantine tanks. And they were very mushy; when I picked them up they just collapsed the way sea cucumbers do before they start firming up. Gross.
This has to be the end, if only because I don’t have any more Pisaster stars to die. Unless the Patiria and Dermasterias stars that I quarantined start getting sick, the outbreak in my seawater table is over, simply because there are no more victims to be infected. From a pathogen’s perspective a 100% mortality rate is a bad thing–if all hosts of a population are killed then the pathogen will die with them. However, my table is connected by water supply to other tables and labs, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the pathogen is out there in Monterey Bay (the source of our seawater), in which case there’s nothing I can do about it. Actually, I can do something. I can cross my fingers and hope for the best.
Against all odds, my last Pisaster star is (literally) hanging in there. It hasn’t lost any more arms in the past 24 hours, and by the standards of the past two weeks that’s a rousing success.
And it hasn’t lost the turgor pressure of its body, so it isn’t as limp as the others were before they died. I didn’t want to mess with the animal too much, but it was pretty strongly attached to the table, indicating that the water vascular system hasn’t lost all of its integrity. If that inter-radial area towards the top of the photograph is one of the areas where an arm was autotomized, the wound has healed surprisingly well. I will have to see what happens tomorrow.
On the other hand, the disease has spread to the lab next door, where a Pisaster giganteus started melting away two days ago. It was discovered with a small P. ochraceus feeding on the sick star, and the two stars have been since isolated. Today the P. giganteus looked horrifying:
This is a really sick animal. There’s a large wound on the bottom edge where an arm had been autotomized; it looks like the wound hasn’t started healing at all. One of the remaining arms has twisted so that it is upside-down with the ambulacral groove–where the tube feet are visible–is facing upwards; that arm is probably going to be cast off soon. The beige-ish fluffy bits in the top of the photo are pieces of gut and water vascular system that are protruding through wounds in the body wall. I would be very surprised if this poor animal is still alive tomorrow. So far, the one that was feeding on this creature doesn’t look diseased, so perhaps it will escape the pestilence.
The last of my Pisaster ochraceus stars waited until today, three whole days after all of its conspecifics had died, to start ripping itself into pieces. This is the sight that greeted me when I checked on my animals this morning:
I spent some time examining the severed arm because it is freakishly fascinating to watch autotomized parts continue on as though they were still attached to the main body. They literally don’t know that they’re dead. I’ve seen almost completely eviscerated sea urchins lumber around a seawater table on about 10 tube feet for days before finally giving up the ghost. This arm remained very active for quite a while–at least an hour–before I gave up and threw it away.
While I had this severed arm in a bowl under the dissecting scope I thought I’d take a few photos of the surface. Beautifully complex animals, sea stars are, when you look at them up close.
Meanwhile, the remaining 4/5 of the star continued to walk around the table. It ended up behind one of the quarantine tanks in which I had sequestered the bat stars, where over the course of the next couple of hours it dropped another arm. Because of its location I wasn’t able to get a decent photo of it, but here is a shot of the wound from the first autotomization:
And I’m not the only one at the lab dealing with this disease outbreak. The lab next door is losing a couple of stars, and the Seymour Center lost one of their Pycnopodia helianthoides (sunflower star) yesterday. And, I heard second-hand that a student in the Santa Cruz area saw some dying stars on a dive in the past few days. What happened in my seawater table over the past few weeks may be just the beginning of something really, really bad.
And I don’t mean plague as in “too many stars to know what to do with,” but as in “disastrous sickness that you don’t want to catch.” Some of the stars in my seawater table have been succumbing to some awful disease lately. A week ago today I noticed that many stars had been busy cannibalizing one of their compadres. Sometimes this just happens, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate that things are about to go south. But when I looked more closely I noticed that the victim, instead of just being eaten, had autotomized its arms. Autotomy occurs in most sea stars and other invertebrates, and in fact is used as a method of clonal replication in some stars and many cnidarians. The species of star that is being affected by this plague (Pisaster ochraceus, the common ochre star) isn’t one that readily autotomizes except in response to some external stress, such as a predator pulling on an arm.
So something was going on in this table. On Monday (Labor Day) I popped in for a quick check and although nobody had lost any arms I couldn’t be absolutely sure that everything was okay. Some of the Pisasters were a little squishy and had arms that were a little twisted. On Tuesday morning there was no autotomy but in the afternoon a star had lost an arm, greatly disturbing the student lab assistant who discovered it. On Wednesday the table looked like an asteroid battlefield:
Many of the other Pisasters were also showing signs of sickness: curly arms (visible in the yellow star in the lower right corner of the photo above. Another ominous sign is that some of the apparently sickly stars were kind of squishy, indicating that the water vascular systems were somehow compromised.
Severed arms littered the table. The autotomized arms retain mobility for quite a while after being cast off–they literally don’t know that they’re dead.
After removing the corpses and cleaning the table as best I could I was able to take a closer look at the survivors. I noticed that most of the remaining Pisaster stars had twisty or crossed arms, and some showed pretty severe stretching in the interambulacral area (“armpit” between adjacent rays), which I think is the first stage of autotomy.
Unfortunately, this disease also affects other species. My Orthasterias koehleri (rainbow star) decided to join the fun. When I arrived Wednesday morning it was intact. It dropped an arm. I went away for about 40 minutes to take care of tasks in a different building, and when I returned it had lost two more arms:
Alas, my one and only Orthasterias succumbed later in the day and was dead on Thursday. Interestingly, the disease does not seem to affect either Patiria miniata (bat stars) or Dermasterias imbricata (leather stars). In fact, the Patiria have been eating pretty well over the past week, scavenging on the carcasses of the plague victims. I don’t know if eating the diseased tissue will cause problems later on.
On Friday I lost two more Pisasters and isolated the Patiria and Dermasterias into tanks. A colleague of mine calls this the Molokai treatment, and I probably should have done it sooner, but I figured that at this point all the stars in the table were exposed to whatever pathogen is causing this disease so at that point why bother? However, I will need to sequester the healthy stars in order to disinfect the table once the disease has run its course, so into tanks they went.
After checking on the stars Saturday morning I am cautiously optimistic that the plague may have run its course. One more Pisaster, that was looking sickly the day before, had died, but my last two appeared healthy. Their arms were not curly, I didn’t see any interambulacral stretching, and they felt nice and hard when I poked at them. All of these are good signs, but I will continue to keep close watch on them. If they make it to Monday we just might be out of the woods.
As of today, one week after I noticed the first severe symptoms, I have lost 80% of my Pisaster collection. To put that in to context, this mortality rate is every bit as bad as some villages that were virtually wiped out by the medieval Black Death.
It has been almost a month since my big female whelk started laying her eggs, and the embryos seem to be developing nicely. The first time I witnessed this phenomenon I saw the egg capsules begin to turn black, and worried that the eggs inside were dead and decomposing. But the cool thing about Kelletia development is that the larvae themselves become darkly pigmented as they develop, which we see as an overall dingy grayness of the egg capsules:
Nosy as ever, I pulled one of the egg capsules off the side of the bin and took it back to my desk for closer examination under my dissecting scope. At the “top” of the capsule (the end that is attached to the bin), the material was quite thin, and I could some vague dark lumps inside. They were slowly moving around, so I knew they were alive.
Individual larvae resemble bubbles with dark stuff inside.
Viability! This makes me happy and encourages me to “liberate” a few larvae to look at under higher magnification. I squeezed out a few veligers and put them under a coverslip with just enough water to keep their shells from cracking but not enough to let them swim away. Here’s a tip for observing small aquatic critters under a microscope: If you make their universe (i.e., the drop of water you are observing) small, they will be less able to swim away from you. Flattening the drop of water with a judiciously placed coverslip will also help immobilize the creature, as well as taking best advantage of the microscope’s optics.
Not too much to look at while stationary, is it? You can see a coiled shell (this is a snail after all) and some blobby structures inside it. At this stage the larva isn’t feeding and relies on yolk reserves provided by the mother when she deposited the eggs. Some of the opaque stuff inside the shell is yolk and other bits are various parts of the digestive system. At about 11:00 just underneath the shell there is an elongated transparent area: the larva’s heart; you can see it beating in the video below. The light mohawk-looking structure facing to the right is the larva’s velum, a lobed ciliated structure that the animal will use to swim after it hatches. The last structure of note is the wedge-shaped thing that points to about 5:00; this is the larva’s foot, on the back of which sits the operculum that is used to close up the shell.
After a bit of trial and error I was able to catch some decent video footage through the microscope of a trapped larva:
The larva rhythmically extends and retracts its velum. Because of the coverslip the larva can’t go anywhere, but if unencumbered it would be able to use that velum to zip around really fast. It is very difficult to keep up with swimming veligers under a microscope!
My guess is that the larvae will begin hatching on their own in the next couple of weeks. They will be washed out of their tub and down the drain of the seawater table, to take their chances in the big ol’ Pacific Ocean.
This week my female Kellet’s whelk (Kelletia kelletii) started laying eggs. She’s been doing this every summer for the past several years. She lives with one other whelk, presumably the father of her brood, as the eggs are both fertilized and viable even though I’ve never seen the snails copulating.
That’s right, copulating. Whelks are predatory marine snails, some of which get quite large. My big female’s shell is a heavily calcified 12 cm or so; she’s a beefy mother! Her mate is smaller, but other than the size difference I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Anyway, whelks copulate, with the male using a penis to transfer sperm into the female’s body. Not very different from the way we humans do things, actually.
So at some point in the recent past my whelks copulated, and this week the female began depositing egg cases on the walls of their shared tub. I first noticed them on Monday, but she may have started over the weekend.
Those pumpkin seed-shaped objects are the egg capsules. Each is actually about the size and shape of a pumpkin seed and has a tough outer covering that contains 20-50 developing embryos. After the entire clutch is lain, which usually takes this particular female a week or so, the mom will leave the eggs to develop on their own.
I’ll keep an eye on these eggs for the next week or so, and might be able to get some photos of the embryos and larvae as they begin developing. Keep your fingers crossed!
Over the Memorial Day weekend I took my students out on the early morning low tides at Natural Bridges State Beach. While they were ooh-ing and ahh-ing and filling out their assignment worksheet, I was playing around with my new camera, taking pictures in the water. Because I am not a photographer and sea anemones just sit there, they quickly became my favorite subjects. Not to mention the fact that they are simply beautiful and photogenic creatures.
At Natural Bridges we have four species of anemones in the genus Anthopleura:
A. xanthogrammica – giant green anemone
A. sola – sunburst anemone
A. elegantissima – aggregating anemone
A. artemisia – moonglow anemone
Of these species, the first two are notable for their large size. At Natural Bridges they can get to be the size of a dinner plate. They live side-by-side in tidepools, and since there are many deep-ish pools at Natural Bridges they are among the most conspicuous animals in the intertidal along the northern California coast.
Anthopleurasola (left) and A. xanthogrammica (right) in a shallow pool at Franklin Point.
It’s easy to identify these animals when they’re sitting right next to each other. The difficulty comes when you see only one in a pool by itself with nothing to compare it to. In a nutshell, here are some things you can use as clues to determine which species you have in front of you.
Let’s start with Anthopleura xanthogrammica, the giant green anemone. This animal’s oral surface and tentacles are a solid color, varying from bright green to golden brown. There are no conspicuous stripes on the central disc and the tentacles are relatively short and stubby, without any white patches.
Anthopleura xanthogrammica, photographed at Natural Bridges State Beach
Anthopleura sola, on the other hand, usually has distinctive radiating lines on the oral disc. Hence the common name of Sunburst Anemone. Its tentacles are generally longer and more slender than those of A. xanthogrammica, and often have sharp-edged white patches. Sometimes the tips of the tentacles are tinged a pale purple. Anthopleura sola are usually brownish-green in color, and I haven’t seen any that are as bright green as the A. xanthogrammica anemones.
Anthopleurasola, photographed at Natural Bridges State Beach
That’s all well and good, but sometimes you come across an individual that doesn’t completely follow the rules. Or rather, it looks like it could belong to both species. Such as this fellow (fella?):
Hmmm. . . sola or xanthogrammica?
The animals obviously don’t read the descriptions. This one has xanthogrammica shape and overall color, but those lines on the disc read as sola-ish. I would call this one a xanthogrammica. What do you think?
