Deep Sea News

A blog war is starting to develop again.  No I am not talking about this one.  I am talking about the Great Invertebrate Wars. Everything was quiet until someone had to stir the pot. GIW I took many causalities with molluscs taking the clear win.  Which invertebrate group will take GIW II?  If polls are accurate, and like Fox News I like to think they are, the winner is the Molluscs with 37%!  The next closest group, Cnidaria with a measly 17%, is so far away we should close the polls early.  What Cnidarians?  A few stinging cells and some carbonate skeletons and everyone is throwing a freakin’ party.  Big whoop!  Arthropods with 14% don’t even have a fighting chance. How many times can you elaborate on the jointed exoskeleton?  Give me a break!  Well finally people are coming to their senses.  Where are your precious echinoderms with a laughable 9% now Chris? What was that Bora? I can’t hear you over all the winning! Who else wants a piece?

So without further ado, the 10 reasons why Molluscs are the best.

• More body size range than any other group. The biggest invertebrate? A mollusc!  And it has hooks!
• Way over 100,000 molluscs! [Insert your comment about how there are millions of arthropods here] Blah, blah, blah…they all look the same and that is some lame estimate based on beetles.
• Fear and respect the radula
• Snails with hair.  We got them! Snails with iron.  We got them!  Snails with spikes that are just plain bad ass.  We got them to!
• They will eat your wood, suck out your innards, and gnaw on your gills!
• Hermaphrodites, multiple partners, and sequential lovin’!
• Aplacophoras…I bet you didn’t even know about these? They are like crawling bristle brushes.
• Bernoulli referred to it as the miraculous spiral and others referred to it as the golden spiral for its relation to the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers.  The logarithmic spiral possesses unique mathematical properties such that as the size of the spiral increases the shape remains unaltered. You can’t throw a Bernoulli or a Fibonacci without hitting one in the molluscs!  Where else to they occur in metazoans?  No where!
• Because of this, this, and this!
• Vampire squids from hell!  HELL!

Make sure you stay tuned here for updates as the situation develops and the #invwar hashtag on Twitter

Errant polychaete from a Pacific coast kelp holdfast; filmed during an Invertebrate Zoology lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In no certain order…

10.  Those barnacles just ain’t feeding!  This is red hot barnacle copulation! Turn the lights down low, everything’s goin’ to be just right…

9. Humboldt Squid are vicious, blood thirsty demons ready to rip the flesh off any living creature.  Of course I tend toward exaggeration

8. Beautiful? Definitely! Slow? Stunningly!  Hungry? Absolutely! Equipped with deadly precision and the gastropod equivalent of a harpoon, species of the genus Conus are here to terrorize all the fish in your neighborhood.

7. Sharks? Whatever… those serious about the ocean know octopods are top predators

6. Stunning, a rare thing of beauty but vicious and deadly. Reminds of a girl I dated once.

5. They’re sponges and they’re horny!

4. They’re like little puppies.

3. No top ten craziest web videos of marine invertebrates would be complete with the GIANT ISOPOD.

2. Polychaetes are one of the most diverse and bewildering marine invertebrate groups. To love the ocean is to love the worms. This is a 10cm Nereis. Make sure you watch to 0:55 for the amazing everting proboscis with its horny hooks.

1. Sure there are far more freshwater rotifers than marine but no reason to leave them off the list.

Bonus: Not invertebrate but sometimes you just gotta dance

Image credit: (c) 2006 MBARI / NOAA These this photograph shows three different types of sponges growing on the lava of Davidson Seamount: large yellow sponges, white frilly sponges, and white filamentous sponges which were previously thought to be a type of coral. The large yellow sponge provides a perch for several basket stars and pink shrimp.

About a month ago, I published my first paper at PLoS One. I believed an open access journal was the most appropriate place for the work so the group’s findings would be accessible to the public, scientists, conservationists, and policy makers.  I am delighted to say that this work, and the major finding of connectedness between the seamount and the surrounding deep sea, in part aided in efforts to include Davidson Seamount into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

I am delighted to see this work being discussed both locally at the Monterey Herald (Scientist See Movement of Marine Species) and internationally in a piece done for Conservation Magazine, a publication for the Society for Conservation Biology (A Seamount a Dozen).

Image credit: (c) 2006 MBARI / NOAA These large yellow sponges are of an unknown species, but researchers on the cruise have been calling them "Picasso sponges" because of their wild shapes. The yellow sponges grow to almost one meter (three feet) tall. Like the corals on Davidson Seamount, the sponges feed on tiny particles suspended in the currents.

Craig R. McClain, Lonny Lundsten, Micki Ream, James Barry, Andrew DeVogelaere (2009). Endemicity, Biogeography, Composition, and Community Structure On a Northeast Pacific Seamount PLoS ONE, 4 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004141

The Future of Invertebrate Domination

…from the Echinodermata.  Chris Mah has heard my call and unleashed the World Asteroidea Database.  This will definitely make roll call easier when I assemble the troops to overtake the world.

Chris has done a terrific job and taxonomic databases such as this not only are the future of science but allow the addressing of several questions not allowable before.  Our wish list for the future of WAD includes body size information, biogeographic data, and of course funding for Chris to continue on.

Speakers (always set to bootliquor.com internet radio), box of vent Zoanthids, marine invert clock by Emily Damstra, postcard from Norway from the Beagle Project's Karen, SCAMIT 2009 calender, Bush-chimp halloween card from parents, bulk supply of coffee beans, Sigg bottle.

In a previous post I mentioned how awesome Emily Damstra’s marine invertebrate clock and SCAMIT’s 2009 calender were. I recently received both and am proudly displaying them in my office!

SCAMIT (Southern California of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists) has released the best calender of the year – a marine invertebrate calendar! Long time DSN reader Leslie Harris works at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and put together this calendar to help support, “a non-profit dedicated to educating & supporting local taxonomists.” Not only do they support working and professionally trained taxonomists, but its members consist of amateur enthusiasts, divers and other interested individuals. She was kind enough to send along an image to share with our readers. I just made a purchase at their cafepress store, it will look awesome in my office next to . . .

Twelve months of inverts!

The following marine invertebrate clock with artwork by Emily Damstra! It is sitting on the bookshelf above my desk nestled with my zoology books and a box of anemone and zoanthid specimens. The artwork is stunning and she does wonderful natural history illustrations. The clock even includes Entoprocts! Check out her other Marine Fish and Invertebrate artwork.

Marine invert clock by Emily Damstra