I really love that quote from Alex Wild, by the way.
Brian Fisher (my former Evolution T.A. from ye ole UC-Davis days) and Alex Smith make open access history by publishing a taxonomic paper in PLoS ONE. It doesn’t matter that this paper is about ants, not deep sea ants either like those discovered from whale falls above. I mean really, everyone knows they are just derived crustaceans anyways, by extension they are honorary deep sea taxa. Some amazing blogger already discussed the paper anyways.
This is a huge step forward for taxonomy and PLoS ONE made the right decision to dive into taxonomy. After all, the International Institute for Species Exploration reported nearly 17,000 species were described in 2006 alone. That is quite a market if you ask me! I am looking forward to more open access species. See here, here and here for reasons why Craig and I support open access and open access taxonomy.
8ft and 1 inch is the length of what is thought to be the largest fish ever line-caught fish. The massive halibut was caught by an angler in Norway. To bad Atlantic Halibut is on the Seafood Watch avoid list. Along with other Atlantic flatfish, halibut are still in decline. Moreover, the fishery often uses bottom trawling. The good news is you can eat Pacific Halibut as long as it is not gill-netted.
A recent study by led by Santelli in Nature provides an answer that may surprise you. It turns out at A and C are the right answer.
We demonstrate that prokaryotic cell abundances on seafloor-exposed basalts are 3-4 orders of magnitude greater than in overlying deep sea water. Phylogenetic analyses of basaltic lavas from the East Pacific Rise (96 N) and around Hawaii reveal that the basalt-hosted biosphere harbours high bacterial community richness and that community membership is shared between these sites.
Now here is the really freaky part. What supports these bacteria? The authors hypothesized and lab evidence supports that chemical reactions of the basalt provide the energy needed to fuel bacterial growth. Volcanic glass is high reactive containing iron, sulphur, and maganese. When oxygen and nitrate in the surrounding water oxidize these elements, chemolithoautotrophic microogranisms could potentially use the free energy associated with these reactions.
Take awhile for that to sink in…because what that means is that our understanding of carbon cycling and deep-sea systems is missing an entire food source and web.
Santelli, C.M., Orcutt, B.N., Banning, E., Bach, W., Moyer, C.L., Sogin, M.L., Staudigel, H., Edwards, K.J. (2008). Abundance and diversity of microbial life in ocean crust. Nature, 453(7195), 653-656. DOI: 10.1038/nature06899
From PhotoBasement, hat tip to Mr. Barton, FCD.
Last night I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Chad Orzel, who just so happens to blog right here on SEED ScienceBlogs at Uncertain Principles. Chad is a physics professor at Union College and blogs on everything physics! He was in merry ole Penn State for a conference so RPM, who blogs at evolgen and is one floor above me, Prof. Steve Steve and I took Chad out for a night on the town. Copious rounds of beer (when their draft menu wasn’t lying to us) were consumed an rambunctious conversations on string theory, blogging, publishing and science in general were conducted. Thanks for stopping by the home of the Nitanny Lions, Dr Orzel and good luck with FutureBaby! Keep an eye out on Chad’s blog for information on his new popular book on physics.
If you are a blogger or blog reader and stopping by Paternoville, let me know and we’ll grab a beer and discuss the finer points of squid!
Via Kevin’s Other Blog, which I thought we had assimilated, I see that Te Papa has made the lectures from the Colossal Squid event earlier this month available.
Dr. Eric Warrant and Dr. Dan-Eric Nilsson (asx)
Dr. O’Shea on Science Express (mp3)
The last hours of the webcast from the squid dissection
Because of my previous trumpeting many of you may believe I scoff at anything non-mollusca. Untrue! I say! Indeed, I am friend of all invertebrate. My favorite books on my shelf is Barnes and Brusca & Brusca.
Just to prove I love all those squishy, squiggly, and slimey, I provide a link to the Sea Cucumber Expedition Blog (hat tip Jeff Ives). Tim Werner from the New England Aquarium is on a three week biodiversity trip to Madagascar. After your done loathing Tim for this, you should check out all of his recent discoveries inlcuding six foot sea cucumbers, two-foot sea stars, and “a hollow-stemmed gorgonian coral only eight inches tall that yielded over 100 individual crustaceans and represented at least seven species.”
