It has taken me months to gather all the photos and videos I needed for this post. I could blame it on the stress of teaching online for the first time, the COVID-19 pandemic itself, or residual malaise from the dumpster fire that was 2020. But really, it’s the animal’s fault. In this case the…
Tag: larvae
Another 1000 words
For several weeks now I’ve been raising another batch of bat star (Patiria miniata) larvae, from a fortuitous spawning that occurred in early January. Since this is rather old hat by now I’m not diligently taking photos or drawing the larvae as often as I would have years ago when this kind of undertaking was…
Starting at the beginning, again
According to my notes at the lab, the last time I spawned urchins was December of 2016, making it four years ago. It has always been something I enjoyed doing, but I didn’t have a reason to until now. When the coronavirus pandemic began almost a year ago now, access to all facilities at the…
Emergence
Every summer, like clockwork, my big female whelk lays eggs. She is one of a pair of Kellett’s whelks (Kellettia kellettii) that I inherited from a labmate many years ago now. True whelks of the family Buccinidae are predatory or scavenging snails, and can get pretty big. The female, the larger of the two I…
Felicitous cleavages
This morning as I was doing my rounds at the marine lab I noticed a pile of eggs next to one of the bat stars (Patiria miniata) in a large table. Somebody, or more likely, multiple somebodies, had spawned overnight. I have absolutely zero time to deal with another ongoing project right now, but I…
Squidlets
Every once in a while some random person drops off a creature at the marine lab. Sometimes the creature is a goldfish that had been a take-home prize at a wedding over the weekend (now weddings taking place at the Seymour Center are not allowed to include live animals in centerpieces). Once it was a…
My favorite larva — the actinotroch!
Five days ago I collected the phoronid worms that I wrote about earlier this week, and today I’m really glad I did. I noticed when I first looked at them under the scope that several of them were brooding eggs among the tentacles of the lophophore. My attempts to photograph this phenomenon were not entirely…
Different strokes
When it comes to the natural world, I have always found myself drawn to things that are unfamiliar and strange. I think that’s why I gravitated towards the marine invertebrates: they are the animals most unlike us in just about every way imaginable. Even so, some of them have bodies at least that are recognizable…
Metamorphosis
It has been a few weeks since I posted about my most recent batches of urchin larvae. Some strange things have been happening, and I’m not yet sure what to make of them. It would be great if animals cooperated and did what I expect; somehow that never seems to be the case. The upshot…
The hybrids are winning!
Although at this stage it’s a close race. Two and a half weeks ago I spawned sea urchins in the lab, setting up several purple urchin crosses with the hope of re-doing the feeding experiment that I lost this past summer when I was on the DL (that’s Disabled List, for those of you who don’t…