Slow and steady (I think)

Today the Pisaster larvae that Scott and I are following are a week old. Happy birthday, little dudes! Yesterday we did the twice-weekly water change and looked at them. They’re getting big fast since we started feeding them on Saturday when their mouths finally broke through. At this stage they are sort of jellybean-shaped and extremely flexible–they don’t have the calcified skeletal rods that sea urchin larvae have so they bend and flex quite a lot. They are also beautifully transparent, which allows us to see their guts in fine detail. We can even watch them swallow food cells!

In profile view you can see that the larvae are shaped sort of like fat C’s. Here’s a side view of a different individual:

In the short term (over the next couple of weeks or so) the larvae will continue to get longer. Their guts won’t change much, but their coelomic systems will develop and become more complex. I’ll try to capture that in photos and drawings to share with you.