About three weeks ago I collected some mussels from the intertidal, to use both in the lab and in the classroom. A mussel can itself be an entire habitat for many other organisms. Many of the mussels I brought into the lab this last time were heavily encrusted with barnacles and anemones. I wanted to…
Marine invertebrates
Pugnacity, and the need to regrow limbs
My friend Peter Macht is the aquarium curator at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. He is responsible for all of the live (i.e., wet) exhibits and has a team of student and volunteer aquarists who help him care for the animals in the hall and behind the scenes. Peter and I go way back together,…
Not-so-happy anniversary
Seeing as today is the third anniversary of the first blog post I wrote about sea star wasting syndrome (SSWS), I thought it would be appropriate to take inventory of my remaining stars and see how they’re doing. Right now I have custody of ~10 bat stars (Patiria miniata), 7 ochre stars (Pisaster ochraceus–collected last…
The original clone wars
A long time ago in a galaxy called the Milky Way, a great adventure took place. We don’t know exactly when it happened, but it must have been very shortly after the evolution of the first cells. Some small prokaryotic cell walled itself off from its surroundings. Then it learned how to replicate itself and as cells…
How can you eat sand?
Well, we can’t—at least, not very well. I suppose we can eat it in small amounts, but sand itself is one of the most nutrient-poor substances imaginable. Sand is, after all, ground up bits of rock. It would provide certain minerals, depending on the type of rock, but none of the essential macronutrients—carbohydrates, proteins, and…
Not always a death sentence
I’ve already written several times about seastar wasting syndrome (SSWS) and you’ve probably seen your share of photos of wasted, melting, self-mutilating stars. However, you may also be wondering about the current state of affairs regarding SSWS, and whether or not sea star populations have recovered at all since the outbreak began three years ago…
Seeing stars at Pigeon Point
This morning I drove up the coast to Pigeon Point. It was cold and very windy, and I was grateful to have decided to wear all of my layers. I don’t remember any cold mornings from last year’s low tides, which made me think that perhaps we’re returning to a more normal non-El Niño weather pattern. The…
A little less confounded now
So. Last week when I looked at my sand dollar larvae I wasn’t at all sure what to make of them. I thought that all of the offspring from one of the matings (F2xM1) were going south and didn’t know how much longer they would survive. The offspring from the other two matings seemed to be…
Confounded
Remember that one batch of sand dollar larvae that were looking weird on Monday? Well, they still look weird. In fact, all of the larvae looked the same yesterday as they did on Monday, which seems strange, considering how quickly they galloped through development for the first three weeks of larval life. It’s as though they’ve…
What are they up to?
These sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) larvae that I’ve been raising will be 21 days old tomorrow, and they are still on the fast track. They’re developing much more quickly than any of the sea urchin cohorts I have raised. Some of them already have juvenile rudiments with tube feet visible. With the urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus)…