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Capture The Iridescence Of Camouflaging Cephalopod Skin

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Capture The Iridescence Of Camouflaging Cephalopod Skin

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Cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish) are considered to be masters of camouflage, blending in with their environment effortlessly. In another Science Friday Educate resource , we learned about how the chromatophore layer allows cephalopods to instantly generate one of three types of patterns ( uniform, mottled, or disruptive) using only three colors: red, yellow, and brown. In this activity, we'll investigate the two deeper layers of cephalopod skin, the iridophore layer, and the leucophore layer, and how they contribute to the remarkable camouflage capabilities of cephalopods.

Introducing The Iridophore Layer

Take a look at this squid skin:

In this gif, you can see some red chromatophores pulsing. You can also see a shimmering area that starts off looking like pale gold, then shifts to bright blue, and finally ends with emerald green. That shimmering area is an iridophore ("iridophore" means "bearer of rainbows"), a reflective type of tissue found in the second layer of cephalopod skin, known as the iridophore layer.

Let's take a closer look at the structure of an iridophore:

Each iridophore organ is surrounded by several stacks of plates of chitin. Chitin is a translucent, somewhat tough material found in many organisms, including the cell walls of fungi, the scales of fish, and the shells of crustaceans (like crabs). When a ray of light strikes the top surface of chitin, some of it reflects, while the rest of it passes through. The light that passes through strikes the bottom surface of chitin, and again, some of that light reflects while the rest of it passes through. This process repeats itself through all of the plates in a stack.

The many rays of light that reflect off of the plates of chitin combine through a process called thin-film interference. In thin-film interference , some colors get canceled out, resulting in the visibility of other colors. You can see thin film interference in soap bubbles...

...oil slicks...

...and CDs.

Each has a thin semi-transparent film of some substance overlying an object and in the iridophore, it is chitin.

Related Educational Resource

Cephalopod Camouflage: A Beauty That's Skin Deep

How Does Thin Film Interference Work?

When light strikes the top surface of a transparent or semi-transparent film, some of the light reflects off of the surface of the film and bounces off, while the rest of the light penetrates into the film itself. The light that manages to penetrate through the top surface refracts or bends slightly because it travels a bit slower through the film. Of the light that penetrates into the film, when it reaches the bottom side of the film, some of it will reflects off of the bottom while the rest of the light passes through the bottom surface and exits the film. In the image below, follow the different paths that light can take when it hits a semi-transparent film.

When a light ray encounters the top surface of a semi-transparent film, some of it penetrates through to the bottom surface, where some of it reflects. If the distance traveled by the ray at (1) is an odd number (1, 3, 5, ...) multiplied by half the wavelength of a given color (350 nm for red), then when it combines with another light ray at (2), there is destructive interference of that color, resulting in the visibility of the complementary color (in this case, green) at (3).

The rays of light that reflect off the bottom surface (let's call these bottom rays) travel a bit further than the rays of light that reflect off the top surface (let's call these top rays), because they must pass through the thickness of the film twice: once going in, and once going out. That extra distance is important. It offsets the wavelengths of the bottom rays from the wavelengths of the top rays when they combine. If that offset is equal to a distance that is half of the wavelength of a given color, then that color is effectively canceled out , removing that wavelength (color) of light.

This is called destructive interference. When particular colors are canceled out, then the complementary colors (their opposites) predominate. So when red is canceled out, then the complementary color green becomes visible.

Scientists are still trying to figure out how cephalopods manipulate iridophores to control their color changes, but a current hypothesis is that cephalopods might be able to change the thickness or angle of the chitin plates in their iridophores to change their color. Changing either the angle or the thickness of the chitin plates would change the distance traveled by rays of light that pass through the chitin, causing destructive interference, and thus altering the colors displayed by the iridophore.

Let's Simulate Iridophores!

Activity #1 Materials

Iridescent Cellophane , cut into at least three 3" x 3" sheets (Iridescent Cellophane can usually be found in Craft Supply Stores)

Scotch Tape or Masking Tape (both, if possible)

A digital camera (preferably on a phone or other handheld device)

9 plastic cups (we used red Great Value 9 Fluid Ounce Party Cups, but any cup that you can easily cut with scissors or a box cutter would work)

An Exacto knife, box cutter, or sharp scissors

A desk lamp with an adjustable head

A dark room, to cut down on ambient light

A table-top that is not reflective, or colored black or white

Construction Of The Viewer

1. An adult should do this step to prevent injury. Use an Exacto knife or box cutter to make a hole near the bottom of each plastic cup. The hole should be just beneath the first raised area on the side of the cup, and should be large enough to allow a scissor blade to pass through.

2. Use the scissors to cut off the bottoms of all 9 plastic cups.

3. Tape two cups together at their sides. Use small pieces of tape to hold both the tops and bottoms together.

4. Continue to tape the cups together at their sides, such that they form an arch or "rainbow" shape. Lay the cups on a flat surface as you tape them together.

5. Label the cups with the black Sharpie pen. Starting from the left, label the cups: 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 70, 50, 30, 10. The numbers represent the approximate angle of viewing through each cup. This is your Viewer.

6. Prop your Viewer upright onto a table surface, and tape both ends of the "rainbow" onto the table.

7. As the Viewer may be a bit unstable, set up your desktop lamp so that the adjustable head lines up with and partially supports the center top cup. If necessary, use a book or two under the lamp to raise it to a good position. Plug the lamp in and turn it on. Adjust the Viewer and Lamp so that there is a focused spotlight from the center of the arch. This spotlight represents the sunlight that shines directly above the ocean. Teacher Note: Please monitor the heat given off by the lamp, as it is close to a plastic cup. Turn the lamp off periodically and when not in use.

Related Educational Resource

How Big Was This Squid?

Steps To Simulated Iridophore Layer

1. Place 3 sheets of iridescent foil (crumpled to create more texture) onto the table surface, in the spotlight of the Viewer.

2. With your camera, take pictures through each cup in the Viewer, from the left 10-degree cup through the right 10-degree cup (skip the 90-degree cup). As you go, illustrate your observations on the Activity 1 Worksheet using color markers. Tips:
It is best to do this in a dark room, because it will cut down on the ambient light and allow you to see colors clearly. Try to zoom in to the point where you do not see the circular outline of the cup. Allow your camera to focus before taking the picture.

After you've finished, complete the Reflections section of the Activity 1 Worksheet.

1. What patterns did you notice between the viewing angle and the colors that you observed?

2. Based on what you know about thin-film interference, why do you think you saw certain colors at certain angles?

3. This was a model of a set of microscopic structures in the skin of cephalopods. In what ways do you think this was a good model? In what ways did this model fail? Are there any ways you could improve this model to make it more valid?

Introducing The Leucophore Layer

Rays of light that manage to pass through the chromatophore and iridophore layers are either absorbed by the relative darkness of the cephalopod's body or (if they are in the right place) are reflected back by leucophores in the leucophore layer.

Leucophores are cells covered with rice-shaped reflective granules called leucosomes. Like disco-balls, leucophores reflect light back in many different directions without changing the color of that light. Oftentimes, leucophores appear as white spots ("leuco" means "white"). However, leucophores actually take on the color of whatever light shines upon it. Under blue light, leucophores would make the cephalopod look blue; under white light, leucophores would make the cephalopod look white. Leucophores help cephalopods to camouflage by reflecting whatever color of light is already in the environment. Leucophores can't be directly controlled by cephalopods. However, by controlling the chromatophore and iridophore layers above, leucophores can alter the amount of light that reaches them.

Let's Simulate Leucophores!

Activity #2

1. Your viewer and all materials from your iridophore layer

2. Your worksheet from the previous activity

3. Black construction paper

4. Aluminum foil

5. A printout of the Activity 2 Worksheet

6. Colored cellophane (preferably blue)

7. A rubber band

Complete the Reflections section of the Activity 2 Worksheet.

1. What were the differences you noticed between your observations of the Iridophores with the black construction paper and the Iridophores with the aluminum foil (Simulated Leucophore) under ordinary light?

2. How do you account for the observed differences between the Iridophores with the black construction paper and the Iridophores with the aluminum foil?

3. Under colored light, what differences did you notice between your observations of the Iridophores with the black construction paper and the Iridophores with the aluminum foil (Simulated Leucophore)?

4. How might it be beneficial for a cephalopod to have a Leucophore Layer, based on your observations?

Related Educational Resource

Model The Texture-Changing Structures of Cuttlefish Skin: Papillae

Let's Camouflage Like A Cephalopod! (Iridophore And Leucophore Layers)

Activity #3

You will need:

1. Photographs taken in the previous activities, uploaded to a student's or teacher's Google Drive

2. Computers or Chromebooks with access to Google Draw

3. A set of undersea backgrounds

Steps To Set Up Your Palette

1. From any open Google document, click on File → New → Drawing. This should open up a new untitled drawing in Google Draw.

2. Right-click anywhere on the checkerboard background. On the menu that appears, select Background → the color white. This will set the overall background to white.

3. Click Insert → Image → Drive. Then click on a photograph from the previous activity.

4. For EACH photograph that you insert, look for regions of specific colors. For example, in the image to the left, there is a pink area with orange flecks on the left side.

5. Look for the CROP IMAGE icon. Click on Crop Image icon first. Then, click on the drop-down arrow beside the icon (it will say "Mask Image"). Select a Shape for your mask. It is recommended that you choose a round shape.

6. Resize your mask by clicking on the black handles on the edges of the mask. When you are content with the region you have focused on, then double click on it.

7. Resize your selected color by clicking on and dragging a CORNER of the image. Try to make your colors relatively small. A recommended size is 1/2 inch in diameter.

8. Repeat Steps 3-7 until you have built up a palette of at least six colors. Remember that you can use the same image more than once, focusing on different regions of color. Drag your selected colors near the bottom of your background, and line them up in a way that is convenient for you.

9. Students may search for real underwater backgrounds. One suggestion is these underwater landscapes by National Geographic . Once they choose an image, they can Insert it or Copy-Paste it. Then, they can resize it (by dragging on a corner of the image) so that it is an appropriate size.

10. Select a region of the underwater background to draw your cephalopod. Then, from the Line drop-down menu, choose Curve (although it is possible to also use the Polyline setting, this tends to produce very angular shapes).

11. Draw your Cephalopod (if you need ideas, check out this sheet ). It is recommended that you click frequently as you draw. Each click produces a set point on the curve. Make sure you close your shape. Once you close it, it should appear as an outline with a light blue fill color.

12. "Paint" your Cephalopod using the colors of your palette. Select the color you wish to use by clicking on it. Then Copy it (Command-C for Macs, and CTRL-C for Windows) and Paste it (Command-Z for Macs, and CTRL-Z for Windows). Drag your copy to the appropriate place on your Cephalopod. You can resize your color spot by clicking on a corner and dragging it. You can also adjust its angle by clicking on the handle and turning it. Repeat, using different colors, until your entire Cephalopod is covered.

Extensions

How Does It All Stack Up?

Cephalopods don't only use one layer at a time; they utilize all three layers simultaneously to create a composite image. This is possible because each layer is at least partially translucent, allowing light to pass through it, even as each layer makes its contribution to "staining" the light a certain color. Here are some real examples of the three layers of cephalopod skin working together:

The iridophore and leucophore layers are the second and third layers of cephalopod skin. To learn about the first layer, the chromatophore layer, try this activity. When finished with the chromatophore layer activity, try to repeat the camouflage activity found in that lesson using the full palette of a cephalopod! It is recommended that you either do the entire camouflage activity online (using drawing software like Google Draw) or that you print out photos of iridophores/leucophores for use in a hard-copy version.

Standards

Next Generation Science Standards Addressed by this Activity:

4-PS4-1. Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move.

4-PS4-2. Develop a model to describe that light reflecting from objects and entering the eye allows objects to be seen.

4-LS1-1 : Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

MS-PS4-2 : Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.

HS-PS4-1 : Use mathematical representations to support a claim regarding relationships among the frequency, wavelength, and speed of waves traveling in various media.

Credits

Resource by Randy Otaka
Editing by Brian Soash, Shirley Campbell, Ariel Zych, and Lauren Young
Digital Production by Lauren Young

Educator's Toolbox

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Capture The Iridescence Of Camouflaging Cephalopod Skin

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Cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish) are considered to be masters of camouflage, blending in with their environment effortlessly. In another Science Friday Educate resource , we learned about how the chromatophore layer allows cephalopods to instantly generate one of three types of patterns ( uniform, mottled, or disruptive) using only three colors: red, yellow, and brown.

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That Does Incredible Impressions of Fish and Snakes | WIRED

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That Does Incredible Impressions of Fish and Snakes | WIRED

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No schoolyard insult is more dreaded, more cruel, more head-turning than calling someone a copycat. Copycatism is adolescent plagiarism, through and through, and potentially devastating to one's social standing. But in the animal kingdom, natural selection loves a copycat. Being something you're not could well keep you out of a stomach.

And no copycat is stranger or more accomplished than the mimic octopus. True to its name, it impersonates a variety of other animals on the fly, morphing from an octopus to a banded sole to a lionfish to a sea snake. But this is no random assemblage of impressions: All of these creatures are toxic or venomous. The mimic octopus isn't just a copycat-it's a copycat that's evolved a strategy far more brilliant than would appear at first glance.

Long ago, the ancestors of octopuses, and indeed the ancestors of all other cephalopods like cuttlefish and squid, took refuge in the safety of their shells. Then something went awry-perhaps a more powerful predator appeared that could make short work of the shells-and the cephalopods were forced to evolve more novel defenses (the nautiluses are the only cephalopods to have retained their shells). The cuttlefish, for instance, is a master of camouflage, blending seamlessly with its surroundings, while squid opt for sheer speed or, you know, growing to over 1,000 pounds in the case of the colossal squid.

But the mimic octopus-not to be confused with the similarly striped but even-better-named wonderpus-has in a way adopted the defenses of venomous and toxic creatures it shares a habitat with. "When they swim up into the water column and hold all the arms around them," says marine biologist Mark Norman of Australia's Museum Victoria, "that I believe is mimicry of a lionfish with its banded spines." And lionfish are not to be messed with. Their dorsal spines deliver a venom powerful enough to cause breathing difficulties in humans.

During all of this mimicry, the octopus is not only contorting its body, but transforming its color to fit the part. This is a famous trick of the cephalopods (oh, and that cranky dinosaur in Jurassic World that was laced with cephalopod genes because are you kidding me), and it's all thanks to cells called chromatophores. Muscles open and close these sacs of various colors, allowing the octopus to rapidly change its hue from a pale sandy color to those noisy black and white stripes-and everything in between.

When the octopus is down on the seafloor it seems to mimic at least two other not-to-be-trifled-with critters. One is the banded sole, a variety of flatfish that looks a bit like a flounder, only it has poison glands at the base of its fins. For this impression, the octopus pulls all of its arms back, forming a sort of teardrop, and jets over the sand.

The other animal is a snake called the sea krait, whose wildly powerful neurotoxic venom can kill you (it's actually docile and its deadliness isn't its fault, to be honest-it needs be able to quickly incapacitate the fish it hunts or the things will just swim away). To mimic this one, the octopus shoves six of its arms into a hole in the sand and holds its other two out, giving them a slight wiggle.

Now, the octopus doesn't just throw that snake impression out willy-nilly. It deploys whenever a particular kind of fish starts getting up in its grill: the damselfish, which is a favorite prey of sea kraits. This suggests that the octopus actively chooses which mimic works against which potential predator.

And that seems to fit right in with science's conception of octopuses as particularly intelligent-except that's all a bit problematic. "Intelligence is a really difficult issue with octopuses," Norman says. "I've gotten into trouble before by saying most of the tests on octopuses demonstrate the lack of intelligence in the researchers."

The thing is, the notion of intelligence is a human construction, and what might be smart for people isn't necessarily smart for animals. So what tests should scientists give to octopuses? Having the creatures solve mazes is nice and all, but it's not like octopuses are scurrying about mazes in nature.

"I think our biggest problem is that we almost give an English language test to an octopus," Norman says. "I think we're failing to ask the right sorts of questions, or understand the nature of the intelligence or the kind of sharpness of their responsiveness." (That said, Norman has seen other octopus species pull off incredible tricks of their own, such as one octopus that cleverly faced down an intruding bristle worm. The octopus couldn't attack the intruder directly, what with the bristles and all, so it tried pushing the worm away with a wave of sand, kind of like a bulldozer ... with eight too many arms.)

Of course, it would seem smartest for the octopus to hole up in a crevice like other octopuses. But their mimicry may have evolved in a very "smart" way to help the octopus procure food, not just avoid becoming it.

A creature would be a damn fool to venture out on the seafloor in daylight without some sort of defense. So the sea krait has its deadly bite, which doubles as an offensive and defensive weapon, while the lionfish has its spines. And they advertise this unpleasantness with that wacky-ass Beetlejuice coloration, scaring off predators so they can roam freely looking for food.

By aping these creatures, the mimic octopus muscles into a market few other octopuses can. "It's colonized the most dangerous habitat you could have as a cephalopod, in that you've got very little in the way of defenses and you're just meat walking around, very edible," says Norman. "They've found a way to forage over those environments during the daytime, relying solely on their capacity to deter predators by their similarity to other species."

And the pickings are good. The mimic octopus tends to just slide into other animals' burrows, things like crabs and shrimp and fish, catching the prey unawares. Yet it is unlikely to be venomous like the animals it mimics, Norman says. It's a bluffer, through and through.

So go ahead, call it a copycat-it don't mind nohow. Just don't call it Beetlejuice, and certainly don't call it Beetlejuice three times. We all know what happens then.
Browse the full Absurd Creature of the Week archive here. Know of an animal you want me to write about? Are you a scientist studying a bizarre creature? Email matthew_simon@wired.com or ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That Does Incredible Impressions of Fish and Snakes

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No schoolyard insult is more dreaded, more cruel, more head-turning than calling someone a copycat. Copycatism is adolescent plagiarism, through and through, and potentially devastating to one's social standing. But in the animal kingdom, natural selection loves a copycat. Being something you're not could well keep you out of a stomach.

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Learn more about Indiana's new state insect.

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Overview | Pets & Parasites: The Pet Owner's Parasite Resource

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Overview | Pets & Parasites: The Pet Owner's Parasite Resource

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Overview | Pets & Parasites: The Pet Owner's Parasite Resource

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By following your veterinarian's recommendations and having your pet tested for parasites annually, you can protect your dog and your family from potentially harmful parasites all year long. Click on the parasites at the top for information on the signs they cause in pets, where they are located, how they affect your dog, the health risks to people, and prevention tips.

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A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. Parasites can cause disease in humans. Some parasitic diseases are easily treated and some are not.

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Overview of Parasitic Infections - Infections - Merck Manuals Consumer Version

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Overview of Parasitic Infections - Infections - Merck Manuals Consumer Version

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A parasite is an organism that lives on or inside another organism (the host) and benefits (for example, by getting nutrients) from the host at the host's expense.

Parasitic infections are common in rural or developing areas of Africa, Asia, and Central and South America and are less common in developed areas. A person who visits such an area can unknowingly acquire a parasitic infection, and a doctor may not readily diagnose the infection when the person returns home. In developed areas, parasitic infections may affect immigrants and people with a weakened immune system (such as those who have AIDS or who take drugs that suppress the immune system-called immunosuppressants). Parasitic infections may occur in places with poor sanitation and unhygienic practices (as occurs in some mental institutions and day care centers).

Parasites usually enter the body through the mouth or skin. Parasites that enter through the mouth are swallowed and can remain in the intestine or burrow through the intestinal wall and invade other organs. Parasites that enter through the skin bore directly through the skin or are introduced through the bites of infected insects (called vectors because they convey or transmit organisms that cause disease). Some parasites enter through the soles of the feet when a person walks barefoot or through the skin when a person swims or bathes in water containing the parasites. Rarely, parasites are spread through blood transfusions, in transplanted organs, through injections with a needle previously used by an infected person, or from a pregnant woman to her fetus.

Parasites that infect people include

Worms (helminths, such as hookworms, tapeworms, and flukes), which are larger and consist of many cells and have internal organs

Protozoa, which reproduce by cell division, can multiply inside people. Most helminths, in contrast, produce eggs or larvae that develop in the environment before they become capable of infecting people. Development in the environment may involve another animal (an intermediate host). A few helminths can develop in the human intestine and cause infection in that person (called autoinfection).

Some protozoa (such as those that cause malaria) and some helminths (such as those that cause river blindness) have complex life cycles and are transmitted by insect vectors.

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Overview of Parasitic Infections - Infections - Merck Manuals Consumer Version

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A parasite is an organism that lives on or inside another organism (the host) and benefits (for example, by getting nutrients) from the host at the host's expense. Parasitic infections are common in rural or developing areas of Africa, Asia, and Central and South America and are less common in developed areas.

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The Echinoid Directory - Natural History Museum

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The Echinoid Directory - Natural History Museum

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The Echinoid Directory - Natural History Museum

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Regular sea urchins have a pentaradially symmetrical test composed of ten double columns of plates, five interambulacral zones and five ambulacral zones, which together make up the corona. Ambulacral zones are made of plates that are pierced by single or double pores for the tube-feet.

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DIY Uni Sushi. Live Sea Urchin Dissection in Photos: 10 Steps (with Pictures)

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DIY Uni Sushi. Live Sea Urchin Dissection in Photos: 10 Steps (with Pictures)

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Intro: DIY Uni Sushi. Live Sea Urchin Dissection in Photos

The world loves sushi, and yet decades ago, it was known only in Japan. Nowadays, you can buy a California Roll at a Kansas convenience store. But the sushi staples are played out... and often very unsustainable.

Once you've graduated from beginner items, like salmon and tuna, your palette may crave the more exotic. And there's nothing more so than the California Sea Urchin, aka Uni.

Leon-Paul Fargue, a French poet, once said, "eating an oyster is like kissing the sea on the lips." Well then I say that eating uni is like getting to third base with the ocean. Paired with a little quinoa, uni is an afternoon delight!

Step 1: Know Thy Fisherman

A good fishmonger, like TwoXSea in SF or Real Good Fish in Monterey, will tell you: the species, the boat, the harvest method and location. Transparent pricing is always a plus too. This urchin is 1.9 pounds @ $4.50/lb. It yields five pieces for a cost of $1.71/each. I'm lucky to know these guys and buy direct. (They also sell on goodeggs.com if you're a Bay Area local.)

This 1.9 pound, live urchin cost $8.55 with more than half of the weight being water. The five pieces of uni weighed about eight grams, making it the same price as silver (February, 2015).

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Step 2: Their Foster Home Before You Adopt

Commercially, live sea urchin are gathered into baskets by underwater divers using SCUBA. Recreational divers may harvest while relying on held breath alone.

They are then delivered to your fishmonger in styrofoam containers with wet newspaper and gel packs. Ideally, they are stored in a tank with cold, salty water circulating. You'll keep yours in a refrigerator. (The back of the bottom shelf is often the coldest part). Keep thick, wet newspaper on top of them to protect their quills and place frozen gel packs on top of the newspaper.

This specific tank on Pier 45 in San Francisco pumps up bay water from 5-20 feet below, depending on the tide. The urchin are stored in perforated bins to keep them separated from the live dungeness crabs that share the same tank.

Step 9: Cleaned Urchin Half

Use a spoon and your fingers or tweezers to remove everything but the uni and then rinse under very gentle water. Use the spoon to delicately remove the pieces. Pick off anything that is not orange and pat dry.

If you're feeling fancy, scrub clean the half urchin shell after delicately removing the pieces. Fill with rice or quinoa and style your uni on top.

Step 10: Fresh Sea Urchin Uni As Sashimi

Serve 'em on rice or alone with some soy sauce and wasabi. I keep my soy sauce in a Buddha Beer bottle with a pour spout on it. (Just FYI.)

Notice the orange liquid that is smooth and not textured. Wipe it away. If wiping it clean doesn't reveal firm and textured flesh underneath, then smell the uni. If it has an unpleasant scent, toss it.

Looking and smelling good? Dig in!

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DIY Uni Sushi. Live Sea Urchin Dissection in Photos

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DIY Uni Sushi. Live Sea Urchin Dissection in Photos: The world loves sushi, and yet decades ago, it was known only in Japan. Nowadays, you can buy a California Roll at a Kansas convenience store. But the sushi staples are played out... and often very unsustainable. Once you've graduated from begin...

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13 Things You Didn't Know About Planarians | Mental Floss

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13 Things You Didn't Know About Planarians | Mental Floss

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Planarians-free-living flatworms found around the world in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments-are fascinating organisms with an interesting natural history ... and a rather complicated relationship with biomedical research. Many species of these worms can regrow their body parts, including a new head, upon decapitation, and are therefore one of the organisms of choice in regeneration research. But they're also being "rediscovered" in several other research areas, including pharmacology and the neurosciences. And they're also pretty cute. Here are some things you probably didn't know about them.

1. Some species practice chemical warfare.

There are several marine planarian species and at least one terrestrial planarian species that produce tetrodotoxin, one of the most lethal substances known. There is no known antidote.

2. Their mouth is located at the middle of their body-and it's not only used for eating.

All planarians are meat-eaters (cannibals, even); most are active predators or, at the very least, scavengers. When hunting small prey, like water fleas, planarians wrap themselves around their prey just like a constrictor snake. Mealtime plays out like a scene from a horror movie: To eat, the worms extend a tube-like organ, called a proboscis or pharynx, which is located at the center of their body. Their mouth is located at the pharynx's tip, which also acts as an anus.

3. They almost were the animal model that defined genetics in the 20th century.

In the early 20th century, Thomas Hunt Morgan -the father of modern genetics- considered planarians and the fruit fly ( Drosophila melanogaster) as potential animal models. He chose Drosophila, and the rest is scientific history.

4. Most planarian species have two eyes, which always look "crossed"; nobody knows why.

There are also species with many eyes, distributed throughout their bodies; species with only one eye; and eyeless species. Weirdly, a decapitated planarian body can detect light, and many planarian species have ear-like structures on their heads that don't detect sound but chemicals; you could say that they taste and smell with their ears.

5. There was an actual comic book titled Planarian Man.

Planarian Man is the creation of Neal Obermeyer, a journalist and editorial cartoonist from Omaha, Nebraska. As expected, Planarian Man is a superhero who is half planarian and half human. His origin story states that he came to be when a young boy cut his finger while slicing a planarian as part of a high school experiment. A small piece of the worm got into the cut and eventually the boy began changing, until he became the crime-fighting Planarian Man.

6. Planarians display behaviors very similar to addiction when given many of the same drugs that humans abuse.

For quite a long time, scientists gave planarians a wide variety of drugs and other chemicals to explore aspects of physiology, but not to study specific areas like addiction. That changed in 2001, when a group led by Dr. Robert Raffa of Philadelphia's Temple University published a paper describing planarian behaviors resembling "withdrawal symptoms" upon exposure to cocaine. This paper triggered a renewed interest on the systematic research on planarian pharmacology. Since then, many other drugs have joined the list of substances that can induce addiction-like behaviors in these worms, including nicotine, amphetamines, and cannabinoids, among many other drugs. Now, speaking of pot...

7. Planarians Have been mentioned on The Big Bang Theory.

One of Theory's main characters is neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, who is played by actual neuroscientist Mayim Bialik. In the episode " The Monster Isolation," which first aired on February 21, 2013, Amy was complaining about some nicotine-addicted monkeys that were going through withdrawal in a rather rough way, then said, "... This makes me miss my marijuana-abusing flatworms; those guys were mellow!"

8. Two other TV shows also mentioned planarians... Both in the same day and the same time!

On March 16, 2014, both The Walking Dead and the reimagined Cosmos documentary series, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, talked about planarians. In The Walking Dead episode " The Grove", a girl named Mika says, "I miss science class. Except when we had to do gross stuff like cut up planaria worms." And in the episode " Some of the things that molecules do," Cosmos used planarians in a segment about evolution. Unfortunately, the animation featured a freshwater planarian in a marine environment, and the animation moved nothing like a freshwater planarian. I guess I should be happy that they showed planarians at all.

9. Many species of planarians can regenerate lost parts-including their heads, which contain rudimentary but fully-functional brains.

If you cut a planarian into several pieces, over time each piece will regenerate into a complete worm. And if you decapitate a planarian, it will not die. The head will keep on living and moving, and will eventually regenerate a new body. The headless body eventually will regenerate a new head, including its brain and nervous system.

Speaking of nervous systems, in contrast to most bilateral animals (those that display unambiguously right and left sides), planarians have not one, but two nerve cords that run along their bodies. It's unclear why they need two of them.

10. If you cut planarians in a particular way, you can make them grow multiple heads.

Yes, you read that right: Like the mythical hydra, planarians can sprout several heads-in some cases, as many as 10. The phenomenon was first reported in 1814, in John Graham Dalyell's book, Observations of Some Interesting Phenomena in Animal Physiology, Exhibited by Several Species of Planariae. (Interestingly, Dalyell was not a trained scientist, but a lawyer; you can read more about the amateur naturalist in this book.) More recently, scientists have begun to unravel some of the molecular mechanisms that can trigger the development of multiple heads in planarians. This paper, though quite technical, has some really nice pictures of multi-headed worms.

And it gets better (or weirder!). If you cut a planarian in half, normally the head portion develops a new tail and the tail portion develops a new head. Very recently, scientists have learned how to make a tail portion grow another tail in place of a head and an anterior portion to develop another head instead of a tail. Here are a couple of examples:

11. Planarians are capable of learning, and upon decapitation, the bodies with newly regenerated heads will remember what they learned.

In the 1950s and 1960s, experimental psychologist James V. McConnell and collaborators did a series of experiments using planarians to explore memory processes. Some of these experiments seemed to indicate that if you trained planarians to respond to certain stimuli, not only did they remember, but if you cut their heads off and allowed the bodies to regenerate a new head, many of the regenerated worms actually remembered their training!

For a series of complex reasons, a significant fraction of the scientific community did not trust these experiments, citing problems with the use of appropriate controls, observer bias, and other less polite reasons. But in 2013, a group led by Dr. Mike Levin at Tufts University published a really interesting paper where they conclusively demonstrated that planarians can indeed learn, and that the tail will remember.

12. If you transplant the brain of a planarian to the body of another planarian, the transplant will hold and eventually control its new body.

There are several examples of experiments where researchers removed a planarian's brain and "installed" it in another worm's body, with at least partial recovery of function. As if this were not remarkable enough, sometimes these brain transplants were successful even when the two worms belonged to different species. Even more bizarre experiments explored what would happen if they dissected a marine planarian brain and put it back in the same worm at an angle, sometimes even backwards. Again, the worms displayed at least some partial recovery. You can find a more detailed account of these experiments my book, The First Brain: The Neuroscience of Planarians.

13. DARWIN STUDIED PLANARIANS.

Charles Darwin himself studied certain land planarians and, although not the first to observe it, he noted their regenerative abilities. In his own words:

"Having cut one of them transversely into two nearly equal parts, in the course of a fortnight both had the shape of perfect animals. I had, however, so divided the body, that one of the halves contained both the inferior orifices, and the other, inconsequence, none. In the course of twenty-five days from the operation, the more perfect half could not have been distinguished from any other specimen."

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13 Things You Didn't Know About Planarians

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Planarians-free-living flatworms found around the world in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments-are fascinating organisms with an interesting natural history ... and a rather complicated relationship with biomedical research. Many species of these worms can regrow their body parts, including a new head, upon decapitation, and are therefore one of the organisms of choice in regeneration research.

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Incredible first footage of a deep-sea anglerfish pair | The Kid Should See This

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Incredible first footage of a deep-sea anglerfish pair | The Kid Should See This

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Behold this incredible first footage of a deep-sea anglerfish pair-a female Caulophryne jordani or fanfin angler and a dwarf male attached to her side. Those long 'whiskers' are filaments that may help her sense predators or prey around her, and though it's difficult to confirm from the video alone, the fish may be emitting (or reflecting) light in points along her filaments and fin rays. The pair were found floating around Portugal's Azores islands, a rare sighting that has delighted biologists.

There are few videos of anglerfish in their natural habitats because they live so deep in the ocean. Specially-designed submersibles are required to withstand the crushing pressure and near-freezing temperatures of the water over a half-mile down. From ScienceMag:

The video was captured at a depth of 800 meters by deep-sea explorers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen in a submersible. The husband and wife team was nearing the end of a grueling 5 hour dive along a steep deep-sea wall on the south side of São Jorge Island, when "something with a funny form" caught their eye, Kirsten Jakobsen says. Aborting their plan to surface, the filmmakers followed the strange creature around for 25 minutes, capturing its movements through the submersible's 1.4 meter-wide window. It was exciting, but also challenging to maneuver the craft to get the best images because the female was only about 16 centimeters long, she says...

The tiny male is also a key part of the discovery. Like many other species of anglerfish, C. jordani forms a permanent pair bond-once a male finds a mate, he bites into her, eventually fusing with her tissue and gaining sustenance through her blood stream. Scientists have known about this bizarre reproductive strategy because they've seen dead males latched onto dead females, but people have never seen it in the wild-until now.

There are over 200 species of anglerfish. Watch this one next: The elusive Black Seadevil Anglerfish in rare video footage by MBARI.

Plus, don't miss 3D scanning an anglerfish's final meal, The Brilliance of Bioluminescence, and Why Do Deep Sea Creatures Look So Scary?

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Incredible first footage of a deep-sea anglerfish pair | The Kid Should See This

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Behold this incredible first footage of a deep-sea anglerfish pair-a female Caulophryne jordani or fanfin angler and a dwarf male attached to her side. Those long 'whiskers' are filaments that may help her sense predators or prey around her, and though it's difficult to confirm from the video alone, the...

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ORANGUTAN OUTREACH MISSION STATEMENT
Orangutan Outreach's mission is to protect orangutans in their native forests of Borneo and Sumatra while providing care for orphaned and displaced orangutans until they can be returned to their natural environment. If they cannot be released, we will do everything in our power to ensure they have a life of dignity and the best possible long-term care. We seek to raise funds and promote public awareness of orangutan conservation issues by collaborating with partner organizations around the world.

A High Stakes First Date

Date Posted December 21, 2022 Text by: Andrea Knox, Advisor at BOSF HQ, Bogor On Saturday, November 12, a small caravan, carrying some very special cargo departed from the BOS Foundation's Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Central Kalimantan. The teams started the day as the sun rose with a swab of their noses to check for...

Introducing B Generous: Donate Now, Pay Later

B Generous allows you to donate to Orangutan Outreach without stressing your bank account! The Issue Have you ever wanted to help more? Donate more? Support more? But simply didn't have the funds available right now...or maybe you felt your donation wasn't large enough to make a difference? The Solution! That's why B Generous was created... to give...

Orangutan Outreach's partner, Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF), is joining The Big Give Christmas Challenge this year to raise money for their campaign 'Support Local Communities to Protect Orangutans'. #GivingTuesday marks the start of the Big Give #ChristmasChallenge22. The #BigGive is a generosity multiplier, meaning that whatever you donate during the campaign week will be doubled!...

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Orangutan Outreach's mission is to protect orangutans in their native forests of Borneo and Sumatra while providing care for orphaned and displaced orangutans until they can be returned to their natural environment. If they cannot be released, we will do everything in our power to ensure they have a life of dignity and the best possible long-term care.

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Polar Bear Facts & Conservation - Polar Bears International

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Polar Bear Facts & Conservation - Polar Bears International

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Polar Bear Facts & Conservation - Polar Bears International

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All about polar bears, from polar bear cubs and adaptations to status and threats. Facts, photos, research, and news from leading polar bear nonprofit.

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Backyard Buddies; Your little bit of wilderness

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Backyard Buddies; Your little bit of wilderness

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Backyard Buddies; Your little bit of wilderness

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We're a non-government organisation on a mission to protect Australia's ecosystems and native species for generations to come. Australia is a land like no other, with about one million different native species. More than 80 per cent of the country's flowering plants, mammals, reptiles and frogs are unique to Australia, along with most of its freshwater fish and almost half of its birds.

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Critter Catalog

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BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Critter Catalog

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Here is information about many common animals found in Michigan, and a few that live in other places. You could find many of these animals in or around your schoolyard. Remember that this is just a little bit of animal biodiversity. There are many many other kinds of animals in other places. If you want to learn about animals that don't live in southeast Michigan, you can go to the Animal Diversity Web.

Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish are all vertebrates - they have a "spinal column" made up of many bones.

While vertebrates are more familiar to most people, there are many, many more species of invertebrates. In Michigan alone there are over 20,000 species, mostly insects, but also snails, clams, worms, arachnids, crustaceans, and other creatures. There are many more that have never been seen and are still unknown to science. Around the world, there are millions of species of invertebrates. Most of those invertebrates are insects. In comparison, the number of vertebrates is closer to tens of thousands.

For simplicity's sake, we have presented six main groups of invertebrates, distinguished by the number of legs they have.

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Here is information about many common animals found in Michigan, and a few that live in other places. You could find many of these animals in or around your schoolyard. Remember that this is just a little bit of animal biodiversity. There are many many other kinds of animals in other places.

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Wildlife Guide | National Wildlife Federation

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Wildlife Guide | National Wildlife Federation

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Wildlife Guide | National Wildlife Federation

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Learn about our nation's wildlife, the threats they face, and the conservation efforts that can help.

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Animal Corner | Animal Facts, Information and Pictures

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Animal Corner | Animal Facts, Information and Pictures

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Featured Animal

Did you know that the red panda is not actually a panda at all? They are a part of the Arctoidea infraorder, which groups them alongside bears, seals, sea lions, walruses, raccoons, weasels, skunks, otters, and badgers! READ MORE →

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Animal Corner | Animal Facts, Information and Pictures

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Featured Animal Did you know that the red panda is not actually a panda at all? They are a part of the Arctoidea infraorder, which groups them alongside bears, seals, sea lions, walruses, raccoons, weasels, skunks, otters, and badgers! READ MORE →

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Click "Animal Groups" at the top to see phylum information and
unusual examples.

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Galapagos Islands - Tours and the wildlife of the Galapagos

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The Galapagos Islands lie almost exactly on the equator. They have been uninhabited for most of recorded history and were very quiet - almost unknown - until they became a useful stopping off and provisioning point for whaling ships and pirates.

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Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.

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Wild turkeys are at a record high in New England-but not all are thankful.

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You Are Here: Endangered Species Home "

Ensuring an Effective Endangered Species Act

The ESA provides a broad and flexible framework to facilitate conservation with a variety of stakeholders. Learn about the tools in place that help us work with our diverse network of partners to deliver meaningful conservation.

Humpback Chub Reclassified from Endangered to Threatened: Collaboration by Partners Has Improved Conservation Status

Thanks to the hard work of state, regional, Tribal and federal agencies, as well as private partners, significant progress has been made conserving and recovering the humpback chub...
News Release

What's in Your Backyard?

Learn about the endangered and threatened species in your area and what is being done to help recover them.

An Integrated Framework for Conservation

The Species Status Assessment was developed to enhance conservation success under the ESA. This framework is based on the best available scientific and commercial information, and it delivers the foundational science for informing all ESA decisions...

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Endangered Species, Sarah Leon

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You Are Here: Endangered Species Home " The ESA provides a broad and flexible framework to facilitate conservation with a variety of stakeholders. Learn about the tools in place that help us work with our diverse network of partners to deliver meaningful conservation.

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WWF - Endangered Species Conservation | World Wildlife Fund

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WWF - Endangered Species Conservation | World Wildlife Fund

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Illuminating the Secret Language of Lightning Bugs | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

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Illuminating the Secret Language of Lightning Bugs | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

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For these light-up lovers, each flash in the night could mean sex or death

smithsonianmag.com

If you're deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains around dusk and spy a hazy blue circle crawling across the ground, take note: you just might be in the presence of a ghost. A blue ghost firefly, that is.

When most of us think of fireflies (or lightning bugs, as we call them in the North), we picture yellow and green-flashing orbs against a darkening summer sky. But the truth is, there's an astonishing amount of diversity among these bioluminescent beetles. Over 2,000 species of lightning bug sparkle and flicker on this Earth, with more than 125 species living in the United States. And each one speaks its own language.

Lightning bug lamps can glow yellow, orange or, as is the case with the ghosts, even shades bordering on electric blue. They can appear as single blinks or long, glowing trails. Some fireflies will flicker when threatened by a predator or caught in a spiderweb. Others light up to compete with rivals or after they've been rejected by a suitor. Some females are completely dark, while others offer flickers to let males know they're on the market.

For the last 26 years, Lynn Faust has been working to catalog and decipher the bioluminescent Morse Code each species flickers out come spring and summer. "Lightning bug flashes are works of art," says Faust, a naturalist who recently penned the definitive book on the topic, Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs, published by University of Georgia Press. "It blows my mind how they evolved these things."

Take Photinus pyralis, one of the largest and most recognizable fireflies in the eastern U.S. On warm summer evenings from mid-June to early July, the males of this species can be found floating about your backyard as dusk falls, usually about waist-high. And while many closely related insect species can only be told apart by dissection and close-up examination of their genitalia, you can identify this one without ever laying hands on it. Just look for the leisurely scrawled "J" shape their butts drag across the darkening sky. That shape has also earned them the nickname "Big Dippers."

Elsewhere in firefly pageantry, Photuris pennsylvanica can be recognized across the Mid-Atlantic states from its quick, yellow-green flash followed by a longer pulse that lasts one to three seconds. Faust calls this firefly the "Dot-dash." The "Marsh Diver," Pyractomena palustris, likes to light up for several milliseconds before diving into wetlands grass. It then repeats the maneuver three seconds later. Look for them as far north as Pennsylvania and south to Tennessee.

For Phausis reticulata, which is the Blue Ghost's less-spooky official title, the name of the game is low and slow. These males sport a bluish-green lamp that they can leave on for a minute or more as they hover near the ground looking for a female. (By and large, firefly displays are about finding that special someone.) Sometimes, the males will even do a move called "spotlighting," where they point their lamp at the ground while flying in small circles. This can look particularly eerie, says Faust, because you see these lights moving across the ground but not the lightning bug.

In her book, Faust writes of a particularly memorable night in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee where there were so many blue ghosts lighting up about 18 inches off the ground that it looked like "an earthbound aurora borealis." The horse she was riding seemed confused by the whole affair, and kept trying to step up onto the layer of light they created.

Interestingly, Faust says each species' display is not set in stone, but can change slightly depending on the time of the year, the time of night and the temperature of the air. Warmer weather, for instance, means the displays get a little extra pep in their step. Likewise, colder temperatures have a slow-motion effect. And when temperatures plunge below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, even the horniest of fireflies can't muster the strength to get turned on.

While flashing is typically associated with males, one exception is the females of the Photuris versicolor complex. Most females that flash have a lamp that's "shorter, paler, and simpler" than the males, according to Faust. But these so-called femme fatales can perform an array of robust flashes meant to mimic the come-hither calls of females from other firefly species. As it turns out, they aren't just trying to get a date-they're looking for (literal) fresh meat. Desperate to mate, males soar in to investigate what looks like an amorous female of their own species, and are promptly devoured.

Sometimes, femme fatales will even take to the skies and hunt blinking males on-the-wing. This is known as hawking, and best observed while blasting Highway to the Danger Zone from some earbuds. Femme fatales have also been known to filch other fireflies that have become trapped in spider webs.

This predatory behavior is particularly interesting, because fireflies don't usually eat during the few weeks they spend as adults before flickering out for good. In fact, a firefly spends the vast majority of its life (one to two years) as a ravenous little larvae known as a glow-worm. These tiny, glowing predators prowl about the underbrush hunting for worms, slugs, snails and anything else they can seize with their mandibles and inject with a paralysis-inducing venom. (Fortunately, glow-worms are too teensy to bite us humans.)

Why all the ravenous ladies, then? Well, many firefly species possess chemical compounds that make them unappealing to predators. This makes sense, given that lightning bugs are relatively slow-flying insects that flit about with the equivalent of a neon billboard on their butts. Without chemical weapons, they'd would be easy pickings for bats, birds, and a whole host of other predators. And while femme fatales have been found to produce at least some of these compounds on their own, Faust and her colleagues believe they acquire others through acts of cannibalism. The females then pass these defenses onto their eggs and larvae.

Unfortunately for the fellas, femme fatales don't just eat rival species. Potential mates are also on the menu. A femme fatale will even break off an active mating session to turn around and wolf down her paramour, mid-coitus. (And you thought black widows were jerks.) Perhaps this is why males in this genus possess two "arms" on either side of their aedeagus-which is what we call an insect's penis-that remain outside the female while mating. It's suspected that these arms act as an Incoming Cannibalism Alarm System that alerts the male if the female should start to shift beneath him.

For all we now know about the language of lightning bug optics, plenty more is out there just waiting to be illuminated. For instance, there are some Photuris fireflies that can only be found in a few far-flung swamps, and appear to be variations of a new species. Faust refers to the ones nearest her home in Eastern Tennessee as the "Loopy 5s." These fireflies flash rapidly for five to seven seconds before ending with a flourish and then disappearing for 11 seconds, only to repeat the flash train elsewhere.

In fact, the Loopy 5s are so different from other fireflies, and so seldom seen, that at one point Faust started to think that she'd imagined them. That is, until she called up a scientist she refers to affectionately as Dr. Photuris-James E. Lloyd, professor emeritus at the University of Florida.

Lloyd has been studying lightning bugs for sixty-some years, and he and Faust often bounce sightings and identifications off each other. A few years ago, Faust called Lloyd to tell him about the Loopy 5s and he stopped her mid-sentence and said he'd seen a very similar flash train in a North Carolina swamp back in the 1960s. He likened the buildup and flourish to a sneeze- ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, CHOOOOOO!

Unfortunately, the next time Lloyd went back to the site of the swamp sneezers, bulldozers were busy converting the wetlands into a golf course. Faust's Tennessee population of Loopy 5s may also be under threat, as their wetlands were recently slated to become a housing plan (before being spared by the economic downturn). If the project were to ever go through, and the Loopy 5s eradicated, it would mean only one site for this potentially new species would remain-the cedar swamp found in Mississippi's Wall Doxey State Park.

Faust has certainly seen her fair share of firefly species, having traveled as far as Southeast Asia to search for their flashes. (In fact, she's created an amazing illustrative chart that depicts the primary courtship flashes for many of the most common firefly species in the U.S., but you'll have to buy the book to get it!) But there's one flasher she still longs to lay eyes upon: the Pleotomus davisii, also known as "Davis's Oddballs." This species is rarely seen, but there are historical records of it existing from the Cumberland Gap on down to the Great Smoky Mountains.

As far as fireflies go, Faust admits that the Oddballs aren't that sexy. The males are mostly dark with feathery antennae. The females don't fly; instead, they resemble large, glowing grubs that do most of the flashing. As a result, many of the specimens we have of this insect are of males that had been attracted to artificial sources of light.

So every night, Faust sets up a light trap in her backyard as the dusk gives way to dark- a candle in the window, if you will. One day, she hopes, an oddball will fly up to greet her.

"Other people have seen them," says Faust, "and I have haunted those woods, but I have never seen one alive."

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Illuminating the Secret Language of Lightning Bugs

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smithsonianmag.com If you're deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains around dusk and spy a hazy blue circle crawling across the ground, take note: you just might be in the presence of a ghost. A blue ghost firefly, that is.

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Research & Related Links - Monarch Butterfly ResearchFlight of the Butterflies

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Research & Related Links - Monarch Butterfly ResearchFlight of the Butterflies

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Monarch Butterfly Research
Monarch Watch Journey North Monarchs in the Classroom Maryland Science Center Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza Where to Find Live Specimens for Classroom Use: Monarch Larvae, Milkweed and Rearing Kits Available
Larvae at the University of Minnesota - ships to Minnesota and Wisconsin only
Larvae, Eggs and Milkweed Larvae, Adults Life Cycle Kit Milkweed and Larvae Reading Materials for Younger Students:

Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost, 2008 - pre-school-grade 2

Monarch! Come Play With Me by Ba Rea - 6-12 year olds

Monarch Magic!: Butterfly Activities & Nature Discoveries by Lynn Rosenblatt - 4-8 year olds

Great Butterfly Migrations by Laura Marsh, National Geographic Readers, 2010 - grades 2 and up

Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons, 2011 - grades 2-4

Hurry and the Monarch by Antoine O'Flatharta 2005, grades K‐4

Monarch Butterflies Life Cycles by Julie Murray 2007‐preK-3

Reading Materials for Older Students and Adults:

The Monarch Butterfly: International Traveler by Dr. Fred Urquhart

The Monarch Butterfly: Uniting a Continent by Karen Oberhauser, Monica Missrie, Eduardo Rendon and Eligio Garcia Serrano, 2003

Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage by Robert M. Pyle, 1999

Monarch Butterfly: A Wonder of Nature, edited by Juan C. Morales and Salvador F. Crotte, published by Industria Fotographique Mexiquense Editorial De C.V., 2008

The Amazing Monarch: The Secret Wintering Grounds of an Endangered Butterfly by Windle Turley, 2010

Learning from Monarchs - A Teachers Handbook by Ba Rea, 2010

Flight Behavior (Fiction) by Barbara Kingsolver, 2012

Recent Scientific Research: Butterfly Organizations: Rest of World Entomologist Organizations North America Rest of World: Corporate Sponsorships Helping Monarchs: North America

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where to find live specimens for classroom use

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monarch reading materials for younger students

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Research & Related Links - Monarch Butterfly Research

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Monarch Watch Journey North Monarchs in the Classroom Maryland Science Center Fondo Mexicano para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza Where to Find Live Specimens for Classroom Use: Monarch Larvae, Milkweed and Rearing Kits Available Larvae at the University of Minnesota - ships to Minnesota and Wisconsin only Larvae, Eggs and Milkweed Larvae, Adults Life Cycle Kit Milkweed and Larvae Reading Materials for Younger Students: Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost, 2008 - pre-school-grade 2 Monarch!

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Insect Collection click here for Microsoft Word copy Insects are invertebrates with three pairs of legs, usually two pairs of wings, one pair of antenna, jointed appendages, and three distinct body regions - head, thorax, & abdomen. Insects belong to the largest phylum of animals known as arthropods.

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The Immortal Jellyfish: Reversing the life cycle with Turritopsis | stonehilldevbio2015

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The Immortal Jellyfish: Reversing the life cycle with Turritopsis | stonehilldevbio2015

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South African Earthworms Can Grow as Large as 22 Feet Long

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South African Earthworms Can Grow as Large as 22 Feet Long

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Today I found out South African earthworms can grow as large as 22 feet long, with the average length being about 6 feet long. The largest one ever found so far, being 22 feet long, was found on a road side in 1967.

Other varieties of large earthworms include the Giant Gippsland earthworm of Australia, which grows about 3 feet long, but can stretch up to 12 feet and weigh as much as 1.5 pounds. These almost never surface. However, on Australian farms that have this worm, you can hear gurgling sounds coming from the ground as they move through the soil, processing about 1/2 to 1 times their body weight in dead organic material per day.

There also used to be a variety of earthworm in Washington State that grew to an average length of two feet long, but this type of worm hasn't been spotted since 1978. Just south of Washington, in Oregon, there is a species of earthworm that grows to about 3 feet long and, if you handle it, will give off a strong smell of lilies. It has not been spotted since around 1980.

Another fascinating earthworm is a variety found in New Zealand, the North Auckland Worm, which typically grows about 4-5 feet long and glows; with several of them around, you'll supposedly have enough light to read by in the dark.

Bonus Facts:

According to research done at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, depending on soil quality, there can be anywhere from 250,000-1.75 million earthworms per acre of land. Poor quality soil will have closer to the 250,000 range; good quality soil, such as farm land, will have closer to the 1.75 million worms per acre. This means that on an average farm with livestock, the weight of the worms beneath the surface of the land will likely outweigh the livestock that walk on top. What makes this more incredible is that a typical garden variety of earthworm can process about 10 pounds of organic material per worm per year. That's a lot of free enriched soil.

Fossil evidence shows that earthworm-like creatures have been around for at least a half a billion years, surviving the mass extinction of animals about 65 million years ago that finished off the dinosaurs, among others.

Earthworms can consume about 1/2 to 1 times their body weight every day. They also will eat just about any dead organic matter along with processing a variety of garbage and even tiny rocks that have organic matter on them, grinding the rocks into a paste that will enrich the soil. They are quite literally nature's garbage disposals. They also force air through the underground tunnels they create, thereby aerating the soil as they work. In the process of doing all this, they process and enrich the soil; they aren't just nature's garbage disposals, but also natural gardeners.

A good variety of earthworm to use for processing your daily garbage is the "Red Wiggler". They will eat about half their body weight in a day, so for every pound of red wigglers you have, they will process about 1/2 pound of your garbage a day, producing extremely rich soil in the process for you to use in your garden. As a general rule of thumb, if it comes from something living or in other words, is any way made up of organic material or has organic material on it, the earthworms will process it. As one worm farmer noted "They will eat any organic material, including cotton jeans, shirts, and even my wife's old nightgown, which they went through in about 4 days." After they are done consuming an old pair of jeans, all that will be left is the zipper and button.

Earthworms not only work tirelessly throughout their lives cultivating and fertilizing soil for plants to grow, but also form the basis of many food chains. They are a staple for many types of birds, snakes, moles, hedgehogs, beetles, snails, slugs and also are eaten by a variety of mammals such as foxes, bears, etc. providing essential nutrients to those animals. Charles Darwin went so far as to say of earthworms, "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures." He believed that earthworms are wholly responsible for the top layer of rich soil on the Earth.

Darwin also noted the amazing ability of earthworms to bury things in the soil, even entire buildings as they gradually process soil underneath and around the buildings having it sink deeper and deeper over time. They are also quite efficient at burying and processing small things like coins and random bits of garbage, which they will literally grab and pull below the surface where they can safely process it.

As you might imagine, it takes a lot of worms to continually cultivate the planet and provide the bases of an awful lot of food chains. Some varieties of earthworms can live up to 50 years (more typically 1-2 years as it's a hazardous existence being the bottom of a food chain), with most species having a maximum life span of about 4-8 years. To compensate for this hazardous existence and the need for a lot of them to cultivate the earth, they reproduce very quickly, with a freshly hatched worm being ready to breed within about 6-9 weeks of coming out of its cocoon. They can re-produce about once a month, with one worm being able to produce several offspring in one go.

Not only this, but earthworms are hermaphrodites. So when two worms mate, both worms produce children. The worms mate by getting in more or less a 69 position, exchanging sperm with one another. Much later, a cocoon is then secreted by the clitellum band, which is visible near the front of the worm. This is roughly ring shaped. As it's sliding out of the secreted ring, the worm deposits its eggs and the other worm's sperm into the ring. The ring then seals itself once the worm is completely out. Eventually, the baby earthworms emerge, lacking only the ability to breed at this point, but otherwise fully developed and ready to go process some soil and be the staple of a lot of animal's diets. How long it takes for them to emerge from the cocoon depends completely on the environment. The cocoon can keep for years without hatching, if the environment isn't right, or can hatch quite quickly if it's a nice dry environment. One cocoon will typically produce 1-5 worms.

There are about 6000 species of earthworms known, of which about 120 species are widely distributed around the world.

Earthworms are able to regenerate most lost segments of their bodies, though this varies somewhat from species to species and the extent of the damage to themselves. In 1972, it was proven that some species of earthworm are able to regenerate to the extent that you can grow two living worms from one bisected worm. However, this is not common among most earthworm species; with most, the side with the head is the only one that survives, assuming the damage isn't too extreme.

Earthworms use a gizzard instead of teeth to grind up their food, small rocks, random non-organic garbage, and other materials.

Even though earthworms need to breath, they have no lungs. They acquire oxygen through their skin. This is why earthworms surface after heavy rains, even though it is extremely hazardous for them to do so. If they don't though, they will suffocate and die. The heavy water content of the soil after rain doesn't allow gases to diffuse across their skin.

Most varieties of earthworms cannot handle direct sunlight for long. This is for two reason; first, because they can't allow the mucus on their skin to dry out or they will suffocate; second, because most also can't handle direct exposure to UV rays for more than a few minutes to an hour. If they are exposed to UV light too long, they will become paralyzed and die quite quickly.

Earthworms have no eyes, but they can sense light, particularly on their front end. They use this sense to make sure they avoid light as much as possible.

There have been earthworms that have been discovered as much as 2 miles below the surface of the Earth. Down there temperatures can reach as high as 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

While earthworms do a bang up job at taking care of soil, they actually do too good of a job in forests. This can actually, over time, kill the forest. All the fallen dead leaves and other decomposing vegetation in the forest are essential for many tree seeds to germinate. The worms process this quickly, leaving the forest floor bare. This also changes the drainage of the forest, hurting some existing trees. This is actually a major problem in forests such as in Rhode Island and Minnesota, which had previously been worm free since the ice age; with the arrival of the worm, it is changing the eco-system of these forests. Worms in forest = bad, worms everywhere else = good. 🙂

The last Ice Age, where glaciers traveled across North America about 10,000 years ago, also had the negative effect of scraping off most of the top layer of soil. This killed off the earthworm population in the United States and Canada. Earthworms were re-introduced in North America by European settlers, from potted plants they brought. As the settlers moved west, they brought the worms with them. In the 200 or so years since North America was fully settled by these worms, they have almost completely populated North America, creating some of the richest soil in the world in the process.

About 370 million worms are exported from Canada alone every year. These worms have a gross export value of about 13 million dollars and a retail value of about 54 million dollars.

Expand for References:

Share the Knowledge!

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South African Earthworms Can Grow as Large as 22 Feet Long

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Today I found out South African earthworms can grow as large as 22 feet long, with the average length being about 6 feet long. The largest one ever found so far, being 22 feet long, was found on a road side in 1967.

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That's Pretty Much Just a Swimming Blanket | WIRED

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That's Pretty Much Just a Swimming Blanket | WIRED

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Odds are that as a kid you had what is known as a "security object," perhaps a stuffed animal or toy that you carried everywhere with you. I had a plushy named Mr. Bear because I was apparently a painfully uncreative child, my sister had one named Beary because she was a little bit more creative, and Linus from Peanuts had his famous blanket.

But roaming the open oceans is a creature that sports a true security blanket: the so-called blanket octopus. Stretched between the cephalopod's highly elongated arms are vast sheets of flesh, and when the octopus feels threatened, it splays out its arms to deploy a stunning cloak that maybe, just maybe, will convince an encroaching predator to piss off.

Even if that doesn't do the trick, the octopus' arms will break off in its enemy's mouth, like a lizard losing its tail, hopefully allowing the erstwhile prey to beat a retreat. These are invaluable defenses because unlike their cousins, blanket octopuses don't ever spend time on the seafloor, and thus don't have the luxury of crevices to squeeze into for protection. And that's very weird for an octopus.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the blanket octopus has nothing to do with its weaponry or flowing cape. While females can grow to a formidable 6 feet long, males are incredibly hard to find. They're so small-less than an inch long-that they could fit inside the ladies' pupils, according to Tom Tregenza, a biologist at the University of Exeter who co-authored a 2002 paper describing the first-ever sighting of a live male blanket octopus. A female blanket octopus can be an astounding 10,000 times heavier than a male, perhaps up to 40,000 times. Indeed, the differences between the two sexes are more extreme than any other animal this size.

But before we dive into that, let's first talk about one of the gutsiest weaponizations in the animal kingdom. The diminutive males don't have the flashy flesh blankets of the females, but they can exploit a menace that other creatures, including humans, would be mad to mess with: the infamous Portuguese man o' war. The blanket octopus is immune to its stings, so a male will just waltz up and snag a tentacle (the man o' war isn't actually a jellyfish, but a sort of colony of clones known as a siphonophore). The little male octopus then wields the tentacle like a toxic whip to fend off predators. And that, as biologists say, is legit. Juvenile females also do this, but abandon the strategy as they grow into giants, "because once you get very large, it's not much of a defense" trying to sting your predator's mouth, says Tregenza. "If a shark is going to take a big bite out of you, it's probably not going to worry very much about the peppery taste."

So why exactly have male blanket octopuses evolved to be so tiny? "I think the males are small because they've got no real reason to be big," he says. "Females have an obvious reason. Females are generally bigger in most animals because if they're bigger, they can make more eggs or babies, and the more babies or eggs you can make, the more chance you have of getting your genes into the next generation." But male sperm? Tiny. So males can afford to be miniscule.

Physical differences like this are known as sexual dimorphism. You sometimes see it in something like size or ornamentation-the female bird of paradise is positively drab compared to the flamboyant male. But females are typically bigger than males not only because their gametes take up a lot more space than sperm, but because eggs take tremendous energy to produce. And while males can get away with being tiny, the trend tends to reverse itself when males compete fiercely for females. In that case, bigness can be an evolutionary advantage, since the largest males win the right to mate. Thus does the human "dude bro" seem to get bigger and bigger as the years go by.

Interestingly, the blanket octopus' radical brand of sexual dimorphism is actually more common than you'd think in the open ocean. Another species of octopus, the argonaut, has tiny males who fertilize giant females (which build a beautiful shell out of calcite to house their young). The deep-sea anglerfish has similarly famous sex antics. The eensy-weensy male bites onto the female and permanently fuses his face to her flesh, releasing sperm whenever she demands it for perhaps decades. Finding females is just so difficult for these males that they evolved to do pretty much nothing but mate, so there's no need for them to be any bigger than they have to be.

So the tiny male blanket octopus finds himself floating out there all alone in the vast ocean. He'll be lucky to find a female, but once he does, he leaves his mate something special to remember him by-like, uh, a limb. "The blanket octopus male puts all the sperm its got into a modified arm," says Tregenza. "The arm then breaks off and crawls into the female's mantle cavity." There, it may even find company: Females can retain the arms of multiple males simultaneously. The male then jets away, though the female isn't necessarily fertilized just yet. "The female blanket octopus will have the male's arm inside her," Tregenza says, "and when she comes to need to fertilize her eggs, she can pull that arm out and squirt the sperm over her eggs like squirting soy sauce onto fried rice." Thus concludes the greatest analogy in the history of science.

Sadly, things don't turn out so rosy for the male. Having fulfilled his purpose, he perishes as the female trucks on, flashing that majestic cape and from time to time taking more lovers. "So it's not the world's worst male," says Tregenza. "But it's no George Clooney, that's for sure."
Browse the full Absurd Creature of the Week archive here. Know of an animal you want me to write about? Are you a scientist studying a bizarre creature? Email matthew_simon@wired.com or ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Octopus That's Pretty Much Just a Swimming Blanket

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Odds are that as a kid you had what is known as a "security object," perhaps a stuffed animal or toy that you carried everywhere with you. I had a plushy named Mr. Bear because I was apparently a painfully uncreative child, my sister had one named Beary because she was a little bit more creative, and Linus from Peanuts had his famous blanket.

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by the Understanding Evolution team

The Arthropod Story takes you on a tour through the amazing evolutionary history of arthropods. Along the way, you'll get a healthy dose of taxonomy, paleontology, natural history and principles of evolution. You can start at the beginning or pick a section from this list:

1. Introducing the arthropods

2. What is an arthropod?

3. Meet the Cambrian critters

4. Tools for success: The exoskeleton and the jointed limb

5. An evolutionary constraint: Small size

6. Conclusion: Evolution and the arthropod

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by the Understanding Evolution team The Arthropod Story takes you on a tour through the amazing evolutionary history of arthropods. Along the way, you'll get a healthy dose of taxonomy, paleontology, natural history and principles of evolution. You can start at the beginning or pick a section from this list: Introducing the arthropods What is an arthropod?

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Find the latest Absurd Creature Of The Week news from WIRED. See related science and technology articles, photos, slideshows and videos.

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Have fireflies disappeared? And 10 things you may not know about them - cleveland.com

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Have fireflies disappeared? And 10 things you may not know about them - cleveland.com

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Summer brings the magic of fireflies - and many adults recall catching them in a dark yard then mesmerized by the glow in cupped hands or a jar.

Today it is more difficult to find lightning bugs blinking and shimmering -- and that is likely due to development and light pollution, according firefly.org.

Most species of fireflies thrive as larvae in rotting wood and fallen branches at the margins of ponds and streams.

"The problem is that in America and throughout the world, our open fields and forests are being paved over, and our waterways are seeing more development and noisy boat traffic," the website said. "As their habitat disappears under housing and commercial developments, firefly numbers dwindle. Logging, pollution and increased use of pesticides may also contribute to destroying firefly habitat and natural prey."

Male and female fireflies use their flashing lights to communicate to attract mates.

Light pollution from homes, headlights and streetlights can cause fireflies to get out of sync and makes it difficult for fireflies to signal.

Following are 10 facts about fireflies from the website and the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park

1. There are more than 2,000 firefly species in the world. There are about two dozen species in Ohio, but the primary one is the common eastern firefly, or big dipper firefly, named for its tendency to fly in a J-shaped pattern.

2. They flash to attract mates. Three chemicals -- luciferase, luciferin and ATP -- combine to produce the firefly's characteristic glow. Each species has a unique flashing pattern, which the males use to advertise their availability to nearby females. When a female sees a mate she likes, she'll flash in response, steadily guiding the male to her location. In some species, though, females mimic other species' flashing patterns to lure unsuspecting males and then eat them!

3. They are super-efficient producers of light. Unlike incandescent bulbs, which give off heat in addition to light, fireflies produce "cold light." That means they don't produce any heat, and 100 percent of the energy is emitted as light.

4. They are best seen just after dusk. The forests near the Cuyahoga River in the national park are among the best location to see them.

5. Adults live for only a few weeks. The larvae live for about a year, but when they become true winged adults, they survive just long enough to mate and lay eggs for the next generation. Most adult fireflies don't even eat, focusing all of their energy on finding a mate.

6. They aren't very tasty. Fireflies contain bitter chemicals that make them unpleasant to eat or even poisonous to some animals. When threatened, they shed drops of blood to warn off predators, called "reflex bleeding."

7. They can be found on every continent except Antarctica. They love warm, humid habitat with plenty of woodlands and access to water.

8. They are known by many names - including lightning bugs, golden sparklers, blinkies, and moon bugs.

9. They are useful in medicine and science. When the chemicals found in a firefly's tail are injected into diseased cells, they can detect cellular changes that can be used to study diseases like cancer. Firefly-specific chemicals have also been used to detect food spoilage, bacterial contamination, or even life in outer space.

10. They eat other fireflies. Fireflies are primarily carnivorous. Larvae usually eat snails and worms. Some species of fireflies feed on other fireflies. But adult fireflies have almost never been seen feeding on other species of bugs. Scientists aren't sure what they eat. They may feed on plant pollen and nectar, or they may eat nothing.

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Have fireflies disappeared? 10 things to know about them

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Summer brings the magic of fireflies - and many adults recall catching them in a dark yard then mesmerized by the glow in cupped hands or a jar. Today it is more difficult to find lightning bugs blinking and shimmering -- and that is likely due to development and light pollution, according firefly.org.

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Overview of the Margulis book Symbiotic Planet

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Overview of the Margulis book Symbiotic Planet

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microbial menageries.

Making sense of anomalies

"one must always strive to distinguish bullshit from authenticity."

Two, or more?

contents | personality | questions | building blocks | methods | evolution | diagram | SET | conclusions

Inquiry
Two previously disconnectedconcepts are posited.

1. Why do plant and animal cells contain organelles that have their own DNA?

2. To what extent does that DNA resemble any other creature's DNA?

Contents:

1. There is a lack of awareness, but " Symbiosis is nonetheless crucial to an understanding of evolutionary novelty and the origin of species.

pp. 5-6.

2. Evolution is the most important scientific concept but why are chromosomes in some organelles?

pp. 17, 19-21.

3. Merger of organisms evidence of which is in the organelles and DNA sequences, means fusing rather than branching among eubacteria.

pp. 34-41.

4. "Faulty taxonomics misleads..." as Bateson argues "the map is not the territory," suggesting that the origins of the two, three and five kingdom systems are arbitrary if not tied to genetic criteria.

pp. 52-68.

5. All living beings share common traits (cytochrome C - respiratory and metabolic pathways), self-maintenance and reproduction are similar, nutrition is how they diverge sharing RNA-DNA based means to forestall the dissipation of heat.

pp. 70-79.

6. the recombination of genes (sex or reduction division) is rather new and accounts for "Programmed death is a nonnegotiable consequence of the sexual mode of life."

pp. 90-101.

7. "An ecosystem is the smallest unit that recycles the biologically important elements" and ecosystems lead to the conclusion that without symbiosis of algae and fungi there would have never been land plants, forests or sufficient oxygen on Earth to sustain us.

pp. 105-110.

8. "Proprioception ...incessantly inform us ...work as sensory systems" ...and the Earth has analogously a form of regulatory systems to moderate the otherwise wildly unsustainable fluctuations in temperature that are not accounted for by physical and chemical realities.

pp. 113-120.

8.1 "We people are just like our planetmates."

p. 128.

9 The five kingdom system of Prokarya and Eukarya the great divisions of natural history and life on earth.

p. 129.

contents | personality | questions | building blocks | methods | evolution | diagram | SET | conclusions

Concepts:

1. "The move toward evolution based classification systems" reveal "Bacteria evolved first."

2. Some organisms live together, that is their genetic future depends on each other cooperating; they possess shared destinies.

lichens

coral polyps

termites

3. Fusion the idea that some creatures, upon ingesting their neighbors or competitors retain some of the structures in their bodies as functional parts.

jellyfish ingest cnidarians and retain stinging cysts (cells)

nudibranchs ingest stinging cells and they remain active.

contents | personality | questions | building blocks | methods | evolution | diagram | SET | conclusions

My life, personalizing the intellectual past.

Her family, son's question influenced the book.
pp. 2,3,4.
Her training, University of Chicago and CAL, Berkeley.
p. 13-21.
Her marriage, (1957) to Carl Sagan
p. 16.
Her educational maturity
pp. 13-24.
"evolutionists, even those long dead, exerted a spell over me from my first encounter with their work."
p. 24 .
"one must always strive to distinguish bullshit from authenticity."
p. 16.

KEY

Science and Philosophy

"There science facilitated the query of profound questions where philosophy and science must merge:

What are we?

Of what are we and the universe made?

Where do we come from?

How do we work?"

Building blocks of doubt, obstacles, or anomalies that gave rise to an opportunity for a radically different hypothesis about competitive evolution:

1. Ciliates, flagellum, or tails on plants and animals

2. kinetosomes (Centriole-kinetosomes and microtubules) calcium and the mitotic spindles

3. Cellular nucleus -- a membrane only in some organisms

4. Mutation -- alteration in the DNA affecting protein synthesis

5. Genes, found outside of the nucleus

6. Chromosomes, must have RNA in order to function as a code for proteins

7. Environment influences what proteins are manufactured and

8. Evolutionary history -- "Life is a series of selves --organisms or cells. " "metabolic information" acts as "a lens to peer into life's ancient history."

[on Morowitz' contributions to evolutionary biology]. in Margulis, p. 79.

The means or method of determining verity:

"distinguishing [lumpers vs. splitters]
Realization [analysis and synthesis]
experiments"[testing assumptions]

¶ 2&3, p. 23.

"The body of coherent science produced by the U.S. school of geneticists in the first half of the twentieth century gave me a sense of history of biological --especially genetical-- thought"

"From the beginning the need for chemical explanation was clear."

24.

"Evolution is simply all history."
"change through time...the convoluted history of which we are the living legacy"

" Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Theodosius Dobzhansky

p. 24.

"mysterious genes outside the nucleus."]

p. 24.

"Experiments described by these authors showed that two kinds of organelles, membrane-bounded structures inside cells but outside the nucleus, plastids and mitochondria, had significantly affected heredity."

p. 25.

"It seemed obvious to me that there were double inheritance systems with cells inside cells."

25

"Library sleuthing," Uinversity of California, Berkeley (Cal)

p. 29.

Her contribution to evolutionary science is:
"The Origin of the Eukaryotic Cell"

SET

p. 31-32

Here Prokarya are discerned as different from Eukarya as the two basic divisions of life on earth.

group

Prokarya

Eukarya

characteristics

Eukaryot- The second of two great domains of living things into which life is divided based on the location of chromosomes or genetic evidence, functional criteria, means of reproduction and behavioral traits; containing bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals.

Also spelled eucaryotic the term refers to creatures that are single or multicellular, possess a wll defined nucleus with a porous membrane separating the inheritable material or DNA from the cytoplasm (body fluid) of the cell, possessing microtubules, reproducing by means of a mitotic spindle, housing diverse organelles some of which have their own forms of DNA, and having well articulated ribosomes for building proteins.

Prokaryot- The first of two great domains of living things into which life is divided based on genetic evidence, functional criteria, means of reproduction, simplicity of form, and identifiable behavior.

Also spelled procaryotic the term describes organisms based on genetics that are often single cells or colonies that have single strands of DNA (inheritable material) without necessary protein components and not restricted to the central walled-off nucleus of the cell. Such creatures do not possess specialized organelles called mitochondria for respiration, nor chloroplasts for photosynthesis. They reproduce differently from their eukaryotic cousins.

Diagram:

p. 30.

Animals

Plants

Fungi

Protoctista

Monera

origins ?

Five kingdoms of life

SET is
Serial Endosymbiosis Theory

SET attracted experimental contributions of many scientists....the idea that the cells of plants and of our animal bodies (as well as those of fungi and all other organisms composed of cells with nuclei) originated through a specific sequence of mergers of different types of bacteria. Joint residence prevails and proliferates.

"Taxonomy is the science of identifying, naming, and classifying organisms ....Taxonomies like maps, bring into relief selected distinguishing features."

(page 51.)

Taxonomy: compare this older version of the tree of life with her description on p. 129.

"Before serial endosymbiosis and the establishment of the aerobic nucleated cell, no cell fusion existed. Meiotic sex, like that of the egg fertilized by the sperm, came later. SET is a theory of coming together, of merging of cells of different (lineages) histories and abilities."
Serial endosymbiosis made our kind of fusion sex possible."

page 32.

bove are four A schematics -or images that convey meaning- based on genetic discoveries revealing an imagery of different ways the tree of life may have flourished since it sprang, rooted in the earth, from the primordial conditions of our prehistoric past.

More on symbiotic associations?

Is the planet symbiotic?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Overview of the Margulis book Symbiotic Planet

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microbial menageries. Making sense of anomalies "one must always strive to distinguish bullshit from authenticity." Two, or more? contents | personality | questions | building blocks | methods | evolution | diagram | SET | conclusions Inquiry Two previously disconnectedconcepts are posited. Why do plant and animal cells contain organelles that have their own DNA?

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14 Fun Facts About Fireflies | Science | Smithsonian

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14 Fun Facts About Fireflies | Science | Smithsonian

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Fact number 3: In some places at some times, fireflies synchronize their flashing

smithsonian.com

What's more magical than a firefly light show on a warm summer night? Just remember that if you catch fireflies, you can keep them in a jar (with a lid punched to let in air and a moistened paper towel on the bottom) for only a day or two before you need to set them free.

(1) There are more than 2,000 species of fireflies, a type of beetle. Despite their name, only some species produce adults that glow. Fireflies in the western United States, for example, lack the ability to produce light.

(2) Males that do glow use their flash to attract females. Each species has its own pattern of light flashing.

(3) In some places at some times, fireflies synchronize their flashing.

(4) Firefly light can be yellow, green or orange.

(5) Firefly larvae may glow, even some that live underground or under water. They use the light to communicate to predators that they aren't tasty (they produce unpalatable, defensive steroids for protection).

(6) Larvae are carnivorous and particularly enjoy snails. Adult fireflies usually live off of nectar and pollen, but some don't feed at all.

(7) A few firefly species are also carnivorous as adults. They don't eat snails, though-they eat fireflies of other genera.

(8) Fireflies are among the many species that are bioluminescent, meaning that they can produce their own light.

(9) A chemical reaction within the firefly's light organ produces the light -oxygen combines with calcium, adenosine triphosphate (ATP-the energy-carrying molecule of all cells) and a chemical called luciferin, when an enzyme called luciferase is present.

(10) The light is the most efficient light in the world. Nearly 100 One hundred percent of the energy in the chemical reaction is emitted as light.

(11) Luciferase has proven to be a useful chemical in scientific research, food safety testing and forensic tests. It can be used to detect levels of ATP in cells, for example.

(12) When luciferase was first discovered, the only way to obtain the chemical was from fireflies themselves. Today, synthetic luciferase is available, but some companies still harvest fireflies, which may be contributing to their decline.

(13) Other factors that may be contributing to firefly decline include light pollution and habitat destruction-if a field where fireflies live is paved over, the fireflies don't migrate to another field, they just disappear forever.

(14) Observing fireflies in your backyard can help scientists learn more about these insects and why they're disappearing.

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About Sarah Zielinski

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smithsonian.com What's more magical than a firefly light show on a warm summer night? Just remember that if you catch fireflies, you can keep them in a jar (with a lid punched to let in air and a moistened paper towel on the bottom) for only a day or two before you need to set them free.

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Phylum Arthropoda - Arthropods - BugGuide.Net

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Phylum Arthropoda - Arthropods - BugGuide.Net

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An online resource devoted to North American insects, spiders and their kin, offering identification, images, and information.

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In a highly-anticipated experiment, researchers are attempting to decode how the octopus controls its multi-armed mind.

It was in a lab full of marine invertebrates that Dominic Sivitilli first glimpsed something uncanny about the mind of the octopus. Among all those creatures, the octopus "seemed to be studying me as much as I was studying it," says Sivitilli, a current graduate student in behavioral neuroscience and astrobiology at the University of Washington who works in David Gire's lab.

"They stand out as an extreme example of intelligence that has evolved along a completely different trajectory as that of the vertebrates," says Gire, an assistant professor in the department of psychology. His lab studies how different kinds of brains process information, and they are researching how octopuses form neural networks that are completely different from a human.

For example, it takes more time for an octopus' neurons to fire compared to vertebrates, so it takes longer for information to move from point A to point B, explains Sivitilli. But where those neurons are located is very different-while humans pack many of their neurons in their brain, two-thirds of the octopus' neurons are distributed across its eight arms, rather than all concentrated in the animal's head. A dense cluster of neurons controls those arm muscles within the arm itself, says Gire, making the sensory processing as close as possible to the external world.

"You can have a bunch of little individual decisions being made along the arm which don't necessarily agree with each other," he says. "This creates a unique form of movement that the octopus is able to possess... they literally can smell and taste with their arms."

Now, Gire's lab is experimenting with new methods of studying the octopus' nervous system. In a first-of-its-kind experiment, researchers are attempting to implant an electrophysiological monitoring device into the brain of a living giant Pacific octopus. Using the conductivity of the sea water itself to power the device, the experiment will combine 3D tracking of the octopus' movements with the realtime neurological data in an attempt to decode how the animal actually controls its body-and to what degree its arms are autonomous. Gire says that the forthcoming research-scheduled to begin in the next few months-is, in some ways, a "watershed moment in general for science." It could help researchers understand patterns they hadn't noticed before, or bring light to how a different neural structure can solve problems.

"We are not the only kinds of intelligence," says Sivitilli. "But it's important to consider the diverse forms the mind can take on Earth and in the universe beyond."

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Credits

Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Ryan Hawk
Edited by Erika Sutter
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills by Dominic Sivitilli and David Gire

Meet the Producers and Host

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In a highly-anticipated experiment, researchers are attempting to decode how the octopus controls its multi-armed mind. It was in a lab full of marine invertebrates that Dominic Sivitilli first glimpsed something uncanny about the mind of the octopus.

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Insect, Bugs and Spider Identification - North America

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Insect, Bugs and Spider Identification - North America

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Arm Yourself With These Cephalopod STEM Activities

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Arm Yourself With These Cephalopod STEM Activities

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Meet the Writer

Brian Soash was Science Friday's educator community leader. He worked to connect educators, schools, and districts with the outstanding educational content being developed by Science Friday.

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Arm Yourself With These Cephalopod STEM Activities

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Brian Soash was Science Friday's educator community leader. He worked to connect educators, schools, and districts with the outstanding educational content being developed by Science Friday.

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Skulls: A Sketchfab Collection | California Academy of Sciences

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Skulls: A Sketchfab Collection | California Academy of Sciences

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Our eye-popping Sketchfab collections let you zoom, spin, and glide around 3D scans of over 700 scientific specimens-including over 150 mammal, reptile, and bird skulls.

See what you can learn about the animals behind the scans: By comparing a variety of characteristics-from tusks to eye sockets-you'll learn more about how these creatures protect themselves and interact with the world.

Standard image (1200x900)

It looks menacing, but this pig-like grazer mostly uses its tusks for digging and defense.

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Our eye-popping Sketchfab collections let you zoom, spin, and glide around 3D scans of over 700 scientific specimens-including over 150 mammal, reptile, and bird skulls. See what you can learn about the animals behind the scans: By comparing a variety of characteristics-from tusks to eye sockets-you'll learn more about how these creatures protect themselves and interact with the world.

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Wanted!

Asian Earthworms! Help stop their establishment.

The best way to deal with invasive species is to stop their introduction in the first place. There are several Asian species of earthworms in the genus " Amynthas" that are knocking on our doorstep and have the potential for very destructive impacts.
More "

Extra!

Read more about it.

This book makes an excellent classroom research tool. Methods for collecting earthworms and keys to identifying your finds are included.

Live!

GLWW on Science Nation
Read the associated article or watch the video at the National Science Foundation's Science Nation website

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The best way to deal with invasive species is to stop their introduction in the first place. There are several Asian species of earthworms in the genus " Amynthas" that are knocking on our doorstep and have the potential for very destructive impacts. More " This book makes an excellent classroom research tool.

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These sharks have evolved to walk on land—and they did it quickly

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These sharks have evolved to walk on land—and they did it quickly

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Sharks have roamed the world's oceans for hundreds of millions of years. In that time, many species have barely changed. But some strange sharks are still evolving-and have even learned to walk. Meet the walking sharks.

These three-foot-long creatures live near Australia, and, as their name implies, move their pectoral fins in the front and pelvic fins in the back to plod along the seafloor-or even atop coral reefs, outside the water, at low tide. Such mobility allows the sharks to wriggle between tide pools and different areas of the reef to prey upon crabs, shrimp, small fish-just about anything they can find.

"During low tides, they became the top predator on the reef," says Christine Dudgeon, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Now, a long-term study by an international group of collaborators has turned up four new species of walking sharks since 2008, bringing the total to nine walking shark species. In a paper published this week in the journal Marine and Freshwater Research, the researchers have also shown that these species all evolved in the last nine million years.

That's highly unusual, says Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida, since most sharks evolve slowly. Sixgill sharks, for example, denizens of the deep sea, "seem stuck back in time," Naylor says. "We see animals from 180 million years ago with exactly the same teeth."

But the walking sharks are likely still evolving in their native tropical waters surrounding Australia, Papua New Guinea, and eastern Indonesia.

"This may be the one place in the world where speciation is still going on for sharks," Naylor says. Studying these animals will help researchers better understand the animals and why "some change, and others stay the same," he adds. ( Related: Watch a strange walking fish that has experts stumped.)

About 400 million years ago, the ancestors of sharks and all other jawed vertebrates diverged. Since then, only about 1,200 species of sharks and rays have come into existence. The animals are, mostly, very slow to evolve, slow to reproduce, and long-lived, Naylor explains.

In other situations, this combination of traits would make an animal less adaptable and more vulnerable to extinction, since, in many cases, continued evolution is necessary to survive changing conditions.

You could say, for example, that "these things should be extinct," Naylor says. "How do you exist for so long with a slow rate of evolution?"

But sharks, obviously, are not extinct-and have flourished, outlasting many other aquatic creatures that have come and gone during their reign in the sea. Apparently, they've figured out a formula that works, despite an ever-changing ocean. ( Related: Six amazing sharks you may not have heard of.)

Naylor says that the rich coral reefs in the walking sharks' range are dynamic, shifting continually over recent epochs as sea levels rise and fall, currents shift, reefs flourish or wither, and temperatures change. This dynamism is likely what's driven their speedy evolution and diversity.

"It's the shark equivalent of the Gal ápagos, where you can see shark evolution in action."

In addition, these animals are "homebodies," Dudgeon explains, laying eggs in the reefs and not traveling far from where they were born. This doesn't allow a lot of gene flow-and seemingly surpassable obstacles, like small stretches of deep water-have provided enough separation for the animals to uniquely evolve in different places.

Until 2008, scientists believed there were only five species of walking sharks, which are also known as epaulette sharks. Though most of these animals have similar anatomy, they have different coloration and marking patterns. The more detailed genetic analysis in the new study reveals that there are actually nine species, and exactly when they diverged from each other in the recent past.

Dudgeon worked with Gerry Allen, of the Western Australian Museum, and Conservation International's Mark Erdmann to gather DNA samples from sharks around the region, taking tiny pieces of the fins without hurting the animals. Samples from museum specimens were also used. These were then sequenced and analyzed in Naylor's lab, and compared to create a phylogenetic tree, a genetic map of the walking shark genus, Hemiscyllium.

Like most sharks, they face threats such as overfishing and harvesting for the aquarium trade. Some of the species, restricted to relatively small areas, are thus vulnerable, Dudgeon says.

Since several of them are only recently well described, and little studied, there is a lack of data; only three of the nine known species are included on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Luckily, none of them are thought to be threatened or endangered yet, but in some cases, "we really just don't know how they're doing," Dudgeon says.

"These species have been pretty much overlooked," she adds.

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These sharks have evolved to walk on land-and they did it quickly

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Sharks have roamed the world's oceans for hundreds of millions of years. In that time, many species have barely changed. But some strange sharks are still evolving-and have even learned to walk. Meet the walking sharks.

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DIY Moth Light — California Center for Natural History

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DIY Moth Light — California Center for Natural History

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above a small selection of moths viewed this summer with the use of a DIY moth light

If you are attracted to seeing ephemeral organisms and like staying up late into the night doing so, moth lighting might be the past time you've been looking for. Don't worry long hikes aren't necessary, but there is a key piece of equipment that will make your new found sweat-less hobby more fruitful; a moth light. Moths for reasons that still escape me and it seems most Lepidopterists (people that study moths and butterflies) are attracted to lights in the night. Do they think it's the moon? Do they think it's a midnight disco? No one seems to have a great explanation, but we do know that different moths seem to have a hankering for different wavelengths (1,2). Most commercially available moth lights use a UV fluorescent bulb or mercury lamp, a large white sheet, and a sizeable battery to power your light. The commercial setups usually run somewhere between 100-$200.

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DIY Moth Light - California Center for Natural History

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If you are attracted to seeing ephemeral organisms and like staying up late into the night doing so, moth lighting might be the past time you've been looking for.

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Check Out These Beautiful Pictures of Different Types of Sponges

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Check Out These Beautiful Pictures of Different Types of Sponges

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Sponges don't have a definite form. Their body is delicate and filled with mesohyl, a jelly-like substance. Being aquatic creatures, the sponges can absorb water, oxygen, other fluids and food with relative ease than other animals. Sponges appear more like plants however, in reality they are animals that belong to the phylum Porifera.

An interesting point to note about sponges is that they don't have a well-developed digestive system, circulatory system or nervous system. These organisms extract food from water that enters their body through pores. Since sponges need substrates (platforms/base) like rocks to remain rooted to the surface in oceans, they are also termed as sessile - sedentary creatures. There are more than 7000 species of sponges in the world and it is likely that more will be discovered in the future. The major species of sponges have the following forms: encrusting-sheets, mounds, tubes and upright-sheets.

Sponges are known to feed on bacteria. However, in few cases microbes may live inside the body of sponges as endosymbionts - an organism living in symbiosis with its host and inside its body. Some of the sponges turn carnivorous where food is scarcely available.

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Check Out These Beautiful Pictures of Different Types of Sponges

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Sponges don't have a definite form. Their body is delicate and filled with mesohyl, a jelly-like substance. Being aquatic creatures, the sponges can absorb water, oxygen, other fluids and food with relative ease than other animals. Sponges appear more like plants however, in reality they are animals that belong to the phylum Porifera.

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The hatchery culture of bivalves: a practical manual

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The hatchery culture of bivalves: a practical manual

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The hatchery culture of bivalves: a practical manual

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Bivalve mollusc culture is an important and rapidly expanding sector of world aquaculture production, representing approximately 20% of this output at 14 million tonnes in 2000. The majority of production is from natural populations although increasingly stocks are approaching or have exceeded maximum sustainable yields.

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Although not the most numerous group of animals in either number of individuals or in number of taxa, the vertebrates are an endlessly fascinating group of animals. Vertebrates are interesting partly because we are intimately familiar with them, but also because we ARE them. Our species, Homo sapiens, is included within the Vertebrata.

Vertebrates are also interesting because they are easy to find. Many other groups of organisms cannot be seen with the naked eye or reside in places inhospitable to humans, like the sea floor. We coexist with many other vertebrates and are often quite aware of them in our environment. We also have many biological, social, cultural and historical ties with vertebrates. We have domesticated dogs, cats, and birds, and have used horses as a means of transporation. We have used carrier pigeons as a means of communicating over long distances. We also use many products from bovids, like milk and leather. In some religions, cows are sacred, objects of reverence.

Vertebrates have a long history on this earth -- more than 500 million years, from the late Cambrian up to today. These first vertebrates lacked jaws, like the living hagfish and lampreys. Jawed vertebrates appeared 100 million years later, in the Silurian.

The vertebrates show affinities with other chordates but share some characters that make them unique. Some have argued that many of the characters that describe vertebrates have been derived from the same set of cells, the neural crest cells. These cells appear early in development, and only vertebrates have them. From neural crest cells are derived the skull and jaw bones.

While vertebrates have a long and interesting fossil record, humans are unfortunately helping to add to the list of organisms that no longer exist. These extinctions reduce the diversity of life on the planet and destroy our ability to understand all aspects of biology. We hope to show you the diversity of vertebrates that has existed in the past and the diversity that exists today. We also hope to show how, taken together, vertebrates extinct and extant can help us understand a great deal about the forces that have shaped the evolution of our world and ourselves in the past and help us predict and understand the future.

Click on the buttons below to learn more about Vertebrates
You can navigate deeper into the Vertebrate groups by selecting Systematics!

Visit our series of pages on the wonder of flight in vertebrates. How do they do it? How and why did flight evolve? What do a pterosaur, a bat, and a bird have in common? Find out for yourself!

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Although not the most numerous group of animals in either number of individuals or in number of taxa, the vertebrates are an endlessly fascinating group of animals. Vertebrates are interesting partly because we are intimately familiar with them, but also because we ARE them. Our species, Homo sapiens, is included within the Vertebrata.

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Pigs recorded using tools for the first time

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Pigs recorded using tools for the first time

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On an October day in 2015, ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein was watching a family of rare pigs at a Parisian zoo when something caught her eye.

One of the Visayan warty pigs-a critically endangered species native to the Philippines-picked up a piece of bark in its mouth and started digging with it, pushing the soil around. "I said, Whoa, that's pretty cool," says Root-Bernstein, a visiting researcher at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris and a National Geographic Explorer. "When I looked up tool use in pigs, there was nothing."

Intrigued, the scientist returned to the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes frequently over the following months to try to observe the behavior again, to no avail. She hypothesized that what she'd seen was related to nest-building, which Visayan warty pigs generally do every six months to prepare for the arrival of piglets. Sure enough, the next spring, a colleague returned to the warty pig enclosure and recorded three of the four animals using tools to complete their nest, an earthen pit filled with leaves. ( Learn more about the Visayan and its rockstar mohawk.)

Though many wild species use tools, from chimpanzees to crows to dolphins, no one has reported the phenomenon in any pig, including the 17 wild pig species and domestic swine. This surprised Root-Bernstein, especially considering the Suidae family's well-known intelligence.

But because wild pigs are so little studied and, in most cases, either endangered or critically endangered, it may not be so unusual that such innovation has escaped human eyes, says Root-Bernstein, whose study appeared in September in the journal Mammalian Biology. ( Read why we love-and loathe-the humble pig.)

She says tool use is particularly fascinating to study because it's a trait shared with humans, as well as one that may highlight a common evolutionary history. "It brings us closer to animals," she says, "and helps us realize it's all connected."

For the research, Root-Bernstein and colleagues videotaped the pig parents and their two offspring using tools four times in 2016 and another seven times in 2017. Thinking that they might prefer more easily wielded tools, the team also added four kitchen spatulas to the enclosure, though that resulted in only one spatula being used twice. ( Read about the oldest non-human stone tools outside Africa-created by monkeys.)

The team noticed the animals-particularly the mama pig, Priscilla-would always use tools in the middle of the nest-building process. According to Root-Bernstein, this consistency in sequence, combined with the fact the pigs' tools could physically move the soil, meets the scientific definition for tool use: "The exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object (the tool) with the goal of (1) altering the physical properties of another object, substance, surface or medium ... via a dynamic mechanical interaction, or (2) mediating the flow of information."

The scientists suspect that Priscilla may have learned how to use the tool herself, and passed on that knowledge to her mate and offspring.

Root-Bernstein acknowledges her data set is small, and that the behavior occurred in captivity, which can cause animals to act differently than they do in the wild. She notes, however, that most captivity-induced behaviors are marked by frequent repetition, such as pacing, but that this tool use was scarce and occurred only within the specific context of nest-building. ( Read how wild boars wash their food.)

It's very possible that wild Visayan warty pigs use tools, too, she adds. Fernando "Dino" Gutierrez, president of the Philippine conservation nonprofit Talarak Foundation, Inc., which works to protect the species, agrees.

A few years ago, Gutierrez witnessed a group of wild pigs pushing rocks toward an electric fence to test it. "As soon as they push and the rocks make contact, they would wait for the clicking sound or absence thereof," he said by email. "Clicking means the wires are hot, and they will back off and not cross; no sounds mean it is safe to investigate what's beyond the wire." ( See amazing photos of wild, warty pigs.)

They're "smart little buggers," he says.

Rafael Reyna-Hurtado, a National Geographic Explorer and wildlife ecologist who studies Africa's giant forest hog, notes the study's small sample size and captive setting but said the results should motivate wild pig scientists to be on the lookout for tool use-himself included.

In Uganda, for instance, Reyna has observed forest hogs-the world's largest pig-using their snouts to clear the ground free of debris before sleeping or resting, though he hasn't seen them using tools.

For Root-Bernstein, many questions remain: Namely, why bother with a tool if a snout is just as efficient? The most likely answer is that there isn't a clear functional explanation, much like chimpanzees that hold hands during grooming so that the groomer has only one hand free.

"Learned things and cultural things work that way," Root-Bernstein says. "Maybe," she adds, "it just feels like the right thing to do."

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Pigs recorded using tools for the first time

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On an October day in 2015, ecologist Meredith Root-Bernstein was watching a family of rare pigs at a Parisian zoo when something caught her eye. One of the Visayan warty pigs-a critically endangered species native to the Philippines-picked up a piece of bark in its mouth and started digging with it, pushing the soil around.

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hugabug 3: Sea cucumbers puke their guts out | l i z w a s o n

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hugabug 3: Sea cucumbers puke their guts out | l i z w a s o n

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Crayfish Dissection

OBJECTIVES:

1. Identify the external anatomical features of a typical crustacean.

2. Describe the appearance of the various organs found in a crayfish.

3. Name the organs that make up the systems of the crayfish

4. Describe how the crayfish is able to move and obtain food.

Click HERE for the Crayfish Lab Companion (will give you some information about what to look for when you take your lab quiz)

MATERIALS NEEDED:

1. preserved crayfish

2. dissecting tray

3. scissors

4. tweezers

5. probe

6. magnifying glass

Crayfish Phylogeny:
Species Procambarus clarkii

CRAYFISH BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Like all crustaceans, a crayfish has a fairly hard exoskeleton that covers its body. This exoskeleton is composed of a nitrogen-based carbohydrate polymer known as chitin. This polymer can be found in many different organisms of the natural world, from the exoskeletons of arthropods to the composition of fungi cell walls. It is a very versatile substance.

As shown in the diagram below, the crayfish body is divided into two main parts:

1. cephalothorax

2. abdomen

The cephalothorax consists of the cephalic (or head region) and the thoracic region. Therostrum is the most anterior part of the cephalic region of the cephalothorax and will form what is commonly known as the "brow ridge". The part of the exoskeleton that covers the cephalothorax is called thecarapace. The cephalothorax is divided into 13 segments. Theabdomen is located behind the cephalothrorax and consists of six clearly divided segments. Each segment of the cephalothorax and abdomen will contain a pair ofappendages. The cephalic region contains 5 pairs of appendages:

one pair of antennules (organs of balance, touch, and taste)

one pair of longer antennae (organs of touch, taste, and smell)

one pair of mandibles (crush the food by moving from side to side)

two pair of maxillae (hold solid food, tear it, and pass it to the mouth, the 2nd pair helps draw water over the gills)

The cephalothorax is divided into 8 pairs of appendages:

The diagram below shows all of these appendages:

1. antennules 2. antennae 3. mandibles 4. maxillae 5. 6. 7. maxillipeds 8. chelipeds

The segments of the abdomen are known as abdominal somites include the following appendages:

5 pairs of swimmerets (create water currents and function in reproduction)

2 pair of uropods (two on each side of the telson)

1 telson (contains the anus)

The uropods and telson together make up the tail fan. The crayfish is able to move backwards by forcing water with its tail fan.

Crayfish Behaviour

Crayfish, common in streams and lakes, often conceal themselves under rocks or logs. They are most active at night, when they feed largely on snails, algae, insect larvae, worms, and tadpoles; some eat vegetation (various water plants). A dead fish worms, corn, and salmon eggs are also favourites of the crayfish. Studies show that adults (one year old) become most active at dusk and continue heavy feeding activity until daybreak. Young crayfish are more likely to be the ones out during bright sunny days, while the older crayfish are more active on cloudy days and during the night. General movement is always a slow walk, but if startled, crayfish use rapid flips of their tail to swim backwards and escape danger.

Most crayfish live short lives, usually less than two years. Therefore, rapid, high-volume reproduction is important for the continuation of the species. Many crayfish become sexually mature and mate in the October or November after they're born, but fertilization and egg laying usually occur the following spring. The fertilized eggs are attached to the female' swimmerets on the underside of her jointed abdomen. There the 10 to 800 eggs change from dark to translucent as they develop. The egg-carrying female is said to be "in berry," because the egg mass looks something like a berry. Females are often seen "in berry" during May or June. The eggs hatch in 2 to 20 weeks, depending on water temperature. The newly-hatched crayfish stay attached to their mother until shortly after their second molt.
DAY ONE
PROCEDURE PART 1: External Anatomy of a Crayfish

1. Place the crayfish on its side in the dissection tray. Use the diagrams above to locate the cephalothorax and the abdomen. The carapace, a shield of chitin, covers the dorsal surface of the cephalothorax. On the carapace, locate the indentation known as the cervical groove. This indentation extends across the midregion and separates the head and thoracic regions of the cephalothorax.

2. Place the crayfish so that the dorsal side is facing upward. Use the diagrams above to locate the rostrum. Beneath the rostrum are the two eyes, each of which is located on the end of a stalk. Having stalked eyes helps the crayfish to see in all directions. This will help them locate predators and allow them to swim to safety. The indentation along the dorsal surface is known as thedorsal suture. This separates the two sides of the carapace.

3. Locate the five pairs of appendages on the head region. First locate the antennules in the most anterior segment, behind them observe the much longer pair of antennae.

4. Locate the mouth on the ventral side of the crayfish. Observe the mandibles, and the two pairs ofmaxillae which are the last appendages of the cephalic region of the crayfish.

5. On the thoracic portion of the cephalothorax, observe the 3 pointed maxillipeds.

6. Next observe the largest, most prominent pair of appendages, the chelipeds or claws. Occasionally you might see one larger than the other. Crayfish have the ability to regenerate lost appendages. The smaller one represents the one that is still regenerating. The cheliped is divided into three distinct parts: the "claw" is formed from thepropodite and thedactylopodite. The dactylopodite is the moveable part of the claw and the propodite is the stable part of the claw that does not move. The lower claw is attached to thecarpodite which is segmented and attaches directly to the cephalothorax.

7. Behind the chelipeds are the four pairs of walking legs. You can use the walking legs as one way to determine the sex of your crayfish. Locate the base segment of each pair of walking legs. The base segment is where the leg attaches to the body. Use a magnifying glass to study the inside surface of the base segment of the THIRD PAIR of walking legs. If you observe a crescent-shaped slit, you have located thegenital pore of a female. In a male, thesperm duct openings are on the base segment of the FOURTH PAIR of walking legs. These may be difficult to find, so if you cannot find them, you can still determine the sex of your crayfish by looking at the next group of appendages.

8. On the underside of the abdomen you will find the appendages known as the swimmerets. As stated before, these are used for creating water currents for feeding as well as functioning in reproduction. The FIRST TWO pair of swimmerets in the male are longer and are tucked up underneath and forward facing. The male uses these swimmerets to transfer sperm to the female. The female swimmerets are all rather small and dainty. She will use these swimmerets to hold the eggs underneath her abdomen until they hatch. When a female crayfish is holding her eggs, it somewhat resembles a bunch of "berries", so the termin berry refers to a female that is clutching her eggs under her abdomen. See the pictures below for assistance in determining the sex of your crayfish.

Crayfish Anatomy Differences Between Males & Females

Female Crayfish "In Berry"

THIS CONCLUDES THE EXTERNAL ANATOMY DISSECTION. PLEASE PLACE YOUR CRAYFISH BACK IN THE CONTAINER.

DAY TWO

PROCEDURE PART 2: Internal Anatomy of a Crayfish

1. Using one hand to hold the crayfish dorsal side up in the dissecting tray, use the scissors to carefully cut through the back of the carapace along the dissection cut line #1 (as seen below on the diagram). Cut along the indentations that separate the thoracic portion of the carapace into three distinct regions. Make small and shallow cuts so as not to disturb any of the structures underneath the carapace. Start the cut at the posterior edges of the carapace, and extend it along both sides in the cephalic region.

2. Use the tweezers to carefully lift away the carapace. Try not to damage any of the underlying structures while doing this. Be careful not to pull away the carapace too quickly, such action would disturb the underlying structures.

3. Place the crayfish on its side with the head facing left on your tray, as shown in the diagram below. Using the scissors, start cutting at the base of cut line #1. Cut along the side of the crayfish, as illustrated by cut line #2 shown below. Extend the cut toward the rostrum at the top of the head.

4. Use the tweezers to carefully lift away the remaining parts of the carapace, exposing the underlyinggills and other organs. Use the diagram below to help you locate these organs.

5. The muscles (anterior gastric, mandibular, and pyloric) are muscles that are used in the process of feeding and grinding up the food. Locate the digestive gland. This gland produces digestive enzymes to help break down the food. The digestive gland is also involved in the absorption of nutrients.

6. Use the diagram below to help you locate the gills. They are feather-like structures found under the carapace and are attached to the chelipeds and walking legs. A constant flow of blood to the gills releases carbon dioxide and picks up the oxygen that is available in the water. The feathery like structure is designed to increase the surface area for more areas of absorption.

7. Use the diagram below to help you locate the organs of the circulatory system. Locate the dorsal tubular heart. It is a "shield-like" structure that is connected to a few small arteries. The crayfish has an open circulatory system in which the blood flows from the arteries into small spaces in the tissues calledsinuses. Gas exchange takes place as the blood flows over the gills before it returns to the heart.

8. To expose the intestine, carefully cut along the abdomen down towards the tail. Do not cut too deeply or you will cut into the intestine. Carefully peel the chitinous exoskeleton away from the abdomen as seen in the diagram below.

1. flexor muscles 2. extensor muscles 3. intestine 4. walking leg 5. uropods 6. telson 7. carapace

9. Carefully peel the lower portion of the exoskeleton from the abdomen (the area that contains the swimmerets) to expose the underside of the abdomen.

10. Use the diagram below to help you locate the lobed cardiac stomach. The cardiac stomach contains some teeth-like growths. These growths compose thegastric mill which is used to help grind up the food for easier digestion.

11. The journey of digesting begins as the mandibles crush the food into smaller bits that can be taken into the mouth. The food then goes on to the stomach where mechanical digestion occurs as the gastric mill grinds up the food into even smaller bits. The digestive glands then secrete the enzymes which will chemically break down the food and absorb the food into the blood which will carry the nutrients to the tissues. The undigested food will then travel to the intestine which will expel the undigested waste through the anus. Use the diagram below to locate the intestine.

12. Use the diagram below to help you locate the ventral nerve cord. The nerve cord lies in a groove on the underside of the abdomen (exactly opposite of the intestine). The ventral nerve cord will run the entire length of the crayfish. It is connected to the primitivebrain that is located in the head region. Notice the enlargements of the nerve cord on the lateral sides. These are calledganglia (singular = ganglion). These will extend to the individual nerves to relay information to the various muscles and organs.

You have now come to the conclusion of the crayfish dissection. Please dispose of the crayfish in the garbage and clean up your dissection tools and area.

Obtain and complete the crayfish dissection review worksheet.

Click HERE for the Crayfish Dissection Lab Companion (this will give you information about what will be on the dissection quiz)

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Crayfish Dissection OBJECTIVES: Identify the external anatomical features of a typical crustacean. Describe the appearance of the various organs found in a crayfish. Name the organs that make up the systems of the crayfish Describe how the crayfish is able to move and obtain food.

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North American Insects & Spiders - North American Insects & Spiders

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North American Insects & Spiders - North American Insects & Spiders

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North American Insects & Spiders - North American Insects & spiders

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Here is our guide to common insects and spiders illustrated with large macro photographs. A tiny world of beauty you’ve never seen before.

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sea urchin dissection – Conservation Education Presenter Intern: Spring 2011… And Beyond

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sea urchin dissection – Conservation Education Presenter Intern: Spring 2011… And Beyond

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Experiment: Recording the Muscles of Clams

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Experiment: Recording the Muscles of Clams

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Background

A student intern project by Eduardo Isla, biochemistry student at the University of Santiago

Have you ever tried to open a clam by hand? It's very difficult because the clam has two powerful lateral muscles called "adductor muscles" that allow the clam to close shut. We can actually record the electromyograms of these muscles. They are huge! What does "adductor" mean? It means to bring towards the center of the body. You have adductors too; they are the muscles that pull your legs together towards your vertical midline. The opposite of adductor is abductor, or, muscles that pull the sides alway from the midline. Not confusing to remember at all.

Let's talk about clams a little bit first. They are invertebrates, like our friend the cockroach. Cockroaches are in the arthropod phylum, whereas clams are in the mollusk phylum (phylum is a division of the kingdom of types of animals). The clams are bivalve mollusks, as are oysters and mussels, with two shells that close to protect the soft tissue of the animal. Some types of bivalves, like scallops, can even "flap" their shells to swim through the ocean water for brief periods. Note that not all mollusks have shells though, like squids, octopuses, and slugs.

The clam shells are symmetrical and joined by a ligament. Inside of the shell is a lining of soft tissue called the mantle. This is the real "meat" of the animal and the part that one would eat if eating a bivalve such as a clam. The mantle secretes the layers of the shell, including the inner nacreous, or pearly, layer. Sometimes a pearl is formed as a reaction to irritation by the depositing of nacreous layers around a foreign particle.

Clams have a muscular extendable mass called the foot that is used for burrowing, and many bivalves have two tubes, or siphons, extending from outside its shell when not fully closed: one for the inflow of oxygenated water and food and one for the outflow of deoxygenated water and waste products.

The gills, suspended within a mantle cavity, are usually very large and function in food gathering (filter feeding) as well as in respiration. As water passes over the gills, tiny organic particles are strained out and are carried to the mouth.

Bivalves have a complete digestive tract; a reduced nervous system; a complete, open circulatory system with a chambered heart, arteries, veins, and blood sinuses; and excretory and reproductive organs. In most species the sexes are separate, and the eggs and sperm are shed into the water, where fertilization occurs. Of course, this being the world of invertebrates, some clams are hermaphroditic and can reproduce asexually. The anatomy of a clam is notoriously difficult to figure out just by looking at it.

At the front and rear of the animal are anterior and posterior adductor muscles, The muscle fibers run transversely, across the clam, from shell to shell, and their action is to close shut. Some bivalves have two adductor muscles, like the common clam we use here. Other bivalves, like the oyster and the scallop, have only one adductor muscle. Have you ever wondered what it is you are actually eating when you eat scallops? You are eating their adductor muscle! Let's try to record the EMG of the adductors now!

Video

Experimental Procedure

1. Find clams - this is the fun part. The ideal would be to find a local supermarket that keeps the clams in saltwater aquariums. Try to choose those clams that are completely closed or those that are slightly open with the filters outside. This tells us that the clams are healthy and alive. A clam with its filters outside looks like this.

2. If you do not find a supermarket that keeps the clams in aquariums and instead keeps them on ice, we recommend you first ask what day they arrive in order to buy them fresh. Then you must choose only those clams that are completely closed, or those that are slightly open and when tapped lightly they close. If the clam does not close when tapped or is completely open, do not choose it, as this is indicative that the clam is dead and cannot be used for experiments. You also shouldn't eat it either.

3. If you live near the ocean, you can collect clams yourself. The method involves walking in the sand at low tide, up to your knees or waist in the water, feeling the shells with the soles and toes of your feet, and placing the clams in your collection bucket. One of us did this when we were 12 years old off the coast of New Jersey, gathering up enough clams for a large family dinner of fettuccine clams for 15 people.

Recording the Electromyogram

1. Keep the clams (Venus antiqua, Chilean clam, or Venus mercenaria, USA Northeast clam) in fake sea solution between 4-8 degrees Celsius before being used. You can buy sea salt for preparing fake sea water from aquarium stores. if you cannot prepare this solution, keep the clams refrigerated in a cold and damp cloth (fake beach).

2. With a hobby hammer, lightly crack open the shell. See video above for reference.

3. Clean up the shards with forceps.

4. Take the Muscle SpikerBox Electrode cables with alligator clips, and attach map pins to them. It's best to match colors and have red map pins in the red alligator clips and black map pins in the black alligator clip. You will bend one red map pin into a hook that you will wrap around the adductor muscle.

5. Insert one red hook electrode around one of the lateral adductor muscles.

6. Insert the other red map pin electrode nearby.

7. Insert the black map pin ground electrode in the general mantle tissue.

8. Plug the orange electrode cable into your Muscle SpikerBox.

9. If using a Muscle SpikerBox, plug the Muscle SpikerBox into a table or smartphone using the green smartphone cable. If using the Muscle SpikerBox Pro, connect it to your computer using the USB cable and open our SpikeRecorder Software. Turn the Muscle SpikerPro on, and a USB icon will appear in the upper left screen. Click the USB icon to connect to your Muscle SpikerBox Pro.

10. Now lightly tap lightly on different parts of the remaining shell. You should see the EMG spikes of the adductor muscles responding to the tap. Tap various parts of the shell. Do you notice if some parts are more sensitive than others?

11. After you are done with the recording, you can dispose of the clam. We recommend steaming it and eating it.

Discussion

1. Another favorite animal of ours, the mantis shrimp, is a predator of clams.

2. Working with mollusk electrophysiology is new to us. Our only other experiments on the mollusk animal phylum were an exploratory demonstration in squid and and two intern projects on squid hatchling phototaxis and octopus adult aggression behavior. Do you have a request or a suggestion? E-mail us to let us know! It would also be interesting to work on experiments from echinoderms, another animal phylum distinct from mollusks and arthropods.

3. Using adhesive patch electrodes, you can also record your own adductor muscles. In humans, these muscles bring your legs together. Gym patrons exercise them to shape their thighs.

4. Try to record the EMG of the adductor muscles in clams of various sizes. One would suspect that the larger the clam, the larger the EMG amplitude, due to the muscle being larger.

5. Unlike the common clam, the scallop only has one muscle instead of two muscles. In a scallop of similar size to a clam, try to record the the comparative EMG amplitude from its one muscle. What would you expect to see?

We also leave you with some of our notes on clam anesthesia, which we used in some exploratory experiments to avoid using a hammer to open the clam. Clams can be sedated with different solutions, and some options are:

1. 5-10% ethanol solution in distilled water. For example, for one liter of 10% ethanol solution, you would add 10.5 mL Ethanol 95% (which you can buy at a drugstore) to 989.5 mL water. In our experiments with Venus antiqua, this solution has no visible effect, but you should try it since it is the easiest solution to make.

2. 10-40 g/L MgCl₂ solution. We added 19 g MgCl₂ for 500 mL of fake sea solution. After 15 minutes in this solution you may notice the clam relaxing and opening its shell.

3. The following solution was not tested by us, but it has been used in some experiments. 1.12% MgCl2 + 1% Ethanol prepared in fake sea water.

If the solutions work and the clams open, try to attach the recording electrodes to one of the adductor muscles and the ground electrode in the visceral mass of the mantle. Even with the clams sedated or partially sedated, it is somewhat complex to connect the electrodes since these muscles are deep inside the clam.

Do not leave the clams for more than 20 minutes in these solutions as there are studies that say that after this time there is an increase in mortality in the treated animals. Also, you shouldn't eat the anesthesia-treated animals when you are done with the experiments.

Abandoned Project: the Clam Electrocardiogram

Hi friends, Eduardo here. Astute followers of Backyard Brains, who read our blog, may remember: "Hey wasn't there some electrocardiogram (EKG) project that was trying to replicate Henry Dale's famous acetylcholine experiment, but using clam hearts instead of frog hearts?" You are correct, for 6 weeks of my 8 week internship, I tried to record the EKG of the clam. The results, however, were confusing. Sometimes we would see what looked like an EKG (see video below), but it wasn't correlated with visible heart contraction. Hand scoring of impulse generation with visible heartbeat contraction did not reveal obvious one-to-one matchups. So, ultimately, we decided to pivot and work on the EMG of the adductor muscles instead, given that it has an interesting behavioral component. Below are my anatomical videos showing the heart beating and one of our first putative recordings. Try for yourself and see what you observe!

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Experiment: Recording the Muscles of Clams

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A student intern project by Eduardo Isla, biochemistry student at the University of Santiago Have you ever tried to open a clam by hand? It's very difficult because the clam has two powerful lateral muscles called "adductor muscles" that allow the clam to close shut. We can actually record the electromyograms of these muscles.

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Lab 5 - Arthropods

Introduction to Arthropods

This is not, as the Victorians called it, the Age of Mammals. The planet today is almost completely dominated by a single phylum of animal life. On land, in the sea, even in the air itself, they are the true masters of the Earth. They are the arthropods. Arthropods are eucoelomate protostomes, dominating the protostome branch of the animal tree, just as vertebrates dominate the deuterostome branch. Arthropods share a common ancestor with polychaete worms, and may even be a direct descendant of polychaetes. But unlike other eucoelomate invertebrates, the arthropod coelom is greatly reduced in the adult animal.

There are over 800,000 named species in the Phylum Arthropoda, named from the Greek arthros (= jointed) and poda (= foot), including the familiar arachnids, crustaceans, and insects, together with a host of less familiar critters, like centipedes, millipedes and sea spiders. All arthropods have jointed appendages. This evolutionary innovation is probably the key to the stunning success of this diverse group. There are about 1018 (10 billion billion) arthropods alive at any one time. There are over three times as many species of arthropods as there are of all other animals on Earth, and there may be millions more that we haven't even discovered. Arthropods do everything with legs or modified legs. They walk, they swim, they creep and crawl, they use legs to sense with (the antennae), to bite and sting with, and even to chew with. That's one reason arthropods look so alien when we see them up close. They chew sideways, and it's all done with legs.

Fossil insects were also very large. Ancient dragonflies had wingspans of a foot or more. But living insects are uniformly small. Perhaps smaller insects were better at hiding or escaping from their many predators. Terrestrial arthropods remain small primarily because of the limitation imposed by their exoskeleton. A large insect would need such a thick exoskeleton to withstand its strong muscles that the weight of the cuticle would be too great for the animal to carry around. For a small animal, having your skeleton on the outside is as logical as having it on the inside. But it poses a fundamental problem for arthropods. They must shed their exoskeleton, or molt, in order to grow. The exoskeleton splits open. the animal emerges and swells to a larger size until the newer, larger exoskeleton is hardened. While the animal molts, it is especially vulnerable - just ask a plate of soft-shelled crabs!

Arthropods have segmented bodies, like the annelid worms. These segments have become specialized, however, with one pair of jointed appendages added to each segment. Among living arthropods, the millipedes most closely suggest what the ancestral arthropod might have looked like. Arthropod segments have also fused together into functional units called tagma. This process of segment fusion, or tagmosis, usually results in an arthropod body that consists of three major sections, a head, thorax, and abdomen. Sometimes the head and thorax are fused together into a cephalothorax. Each of these body sections still bear the appendages that went with it, though these appendages are often highly modified. Arthropods are very highly cephalized, often with intricate mouthparts and elaborate sensory organs, including statocysts, antennae, simple eyes and compound eyes. Sensitive hairs on the surface of the body can detect touch, water currents, or chemicals. Their nervous systems are highly developed, with chains of ganglia serving various parts of the body, and three fused pairs of cerebral ganglia forming a brain.
Taxonomy
Phylum Arthropoda:

Subphylum Chelicerata

Class Merostomata - horseshoe crabs,

Class Arachnida - spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites

Subphylum Crustacea - crustaceans

Subphylum Uniramia

Class Chilopoda - centipedes

Class Diplopoda - millipedes

Class Insecta - insects

Order Hymenoptera - ants, bees, wasps

Order Coleoptera - beetles

Order Lepidoptera - butterflies, moths

Order Diptera - flies, mosquitoes

Order Orthoptera - grasshoppers, crickets, roaches

Order Odonata - dragonflies

Order Isoptera - termites
Terms

jointed appendages

cuticle

chitin

exoskeleton

molt

tagma

tagmosis

head

thorax

abdomen

cephalothorax

statocyst

antennae

simple eyes

compound eyes

gills

trachea

spiracles

malphigian tubules

uric acid

sexual dimorphism

chelicerae

fangs

pedipalps

spinnerets

webs

Rocky Mt. Spotted Fever

Lyme Disease

biramous appendages

uniramous appendages

nauplius larvae

detritus

detritivores

pheromones

maxillae

simple metamorphosis

complete metamorphosis

Characteristics of Subphyla and Classes
Subphylum Chelicerata:

In chelicerates, the first pair of appendages are called chelicerae, and are modified to manipulate food. They are often modified as fangs or pincers. Chelicerates lack antennae.

Class Merostomata - horseshoe crabs ( Limulus)

Horseshoe crabs have larvae that are very similar to trilobites, and they may be descendants of this long vanished group. Horseshoe crabs are nocturnal, feeding on annelids and molluscs. They swim on their backs, or walk upright on five pairs of walking legs. They live in the deep ocean, migrating inshore in large numbers in the spring to mate on the beaches during moonlight and high tide - much like undergraduates on Spring Break.

Class Arachnida - (57,000 sp.), spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, and daddy longlegs

This very successful group of arthropods have four pair of walking legs (8 legs). The first pair of appendages are the chelicerae, and the second pair are pedipalps, appendages modified for sensory functions or for manipulating prey. They are mostly carnivorous (many mites are herbivores). Most secrete powerful digestive enzymes which are injected into the prey to liquify it. Once dissolved in its own epidermis, the prey is sipped like a root beer float.

Order Scorpiones (2,000 sp.) - Scorpions have pedipalps modified as pincers, along with a venomous sting in their tail. Scorpions date back to the Silurian, about 425 mya, and may be the first terrestrial arthropods.

Order Opiliones (5,000 sp.) - Daddy Longlegs is a familiar arachnid. It has an oval body with extremely long legs, which they frequently lose in various accidents and brushes with predators. They are predators, herbivores, and scavengers. Look at them closely next time you see one. They carry their eyes atop a little tower on their back ( weird!).
Subphylum Crustacea - (38,000 sp.), crabs, shrimp, lobsters, crayfish, isopods, barnacles, brine shrimp
Crustaceans are mostly marine, and dominate the ocean to the same degree that insects dominate the land and air. Despite their aquatic diversity, there are very few terrestrial crustaceans, just as there are very few truly aquatic insects. Crustaceans have biramous appendages. Each leg has an additional process, like a little miniature leg branching off from the main leg. Many groups of crustaceans have lost this extra appendage during subsequent evolution. The Order Decapoda have five pair of walking legs, and include the familiar crabs, lobsters, and crayfish. The first pair of appendages are usually modified as antennae. Crustaceans have two pair of antennae. Another set of anterior appendages are modified as mandibles, which function in grasping, biting, and chewing food. Male crayfish also use one pair of legs as a copulatory organ. All crustaceans share a common type of larva called a nauplius larva.

Order Isopoda, Isopods have many common names, such as Pill bugs, Roly-Polys, Woodlice, Bibble Bugs, Cheesybugs, Cud-worms, Coffin-cutters, Monkey Peas, Penny Pigs, Sink-lice, Slaters, Sowbugs, Tiggyhogs, and (in New Orleans) Doodlebugs. They are one of the few successful terrestrial crustaceans. They feed on decaying vegetation in the leaf litter.
Subphylum Uniramia - centipedes, millipedes, insects
Uniramians have a single pair of antennae, and uniramous appendages. They probably evolved from oligochaete worms.

Class Chilopoda - (2,500 sp.) Centipedes dwell in damp places under old logs and stones. They are carnivorous, eating mostly insects. They are highly segmented, and have one pair of legs per segment. Despite the name, the number of legs comes out to considerably less than one hundred (centi = 100). The first trunk segment bears poison fangs. Centipedes are very dangerous, and their bite is extremely painful.

Insects have extremely elaborate mouthparts, consisting of pairs of appendages fused into a lower lip (labium), and an upper lip (labrum), with other appendages called maxillae aiding in chewing. These mouthparts are highly modified in various groups for chewing, sucking, and piercing. Insects undergo metamorphosis as they develop, changing from one form to another as they mature. Some (about 10%) show simple metamorphosis, in which there is no resting stage. The juvenile stages look like tiny versions of the adults. Most (90%) show complete metamorphosis, in which one stage is an inactive pupa, like the cocoon of the moth or the chrysalis of the butterfly. Their larvae are often radically different from the mature adult (like the butterfly and the caterpillar). They not only look different, they live in different places and eat different food.
To Do and View
Observe the preserved arthropods on display. How do the various groups use their legs to walk, swim, feed or mate?

Watch the way the millipede moves. Look at the legs. See how the waves of muscle contraction pass down through the segments? The polychaete worm Nereis moves in exactly the same way. Handle the millipedes very gently. They are someone's pets. They also make great pets for dorm rooms - they need little care, don't take up much room, and don't make noise or messes, unlike your roommate.

Disturb the centipedes to get them moving around. Can you see the poison fangs? Notice how flat the body is, and contrast the number of legs with those of the millipede. Why does each container hold only a single centipede? Don't open the jars unless you have a thing for extreme pain.

Play around with the roly-polys. Oh, go ahead, it's cool. They won't bite. Watch the way they roll up into a ball when disturbed. Not all isopods can do this, but rolling up into an armored ball is a great defensive tactic. Compare our teeny tiny terrestrial version with the enormous (preserved) marine isopods.

Look at the live brine shrimp, hermit crabs and fiddler crabs. Treat them gently (more pets). Watch the way they use their legs, including the modified legs that form their mouthparts. You may see the male fiddler crabs raise their large claw and wave it about to claim a territory inside the tank, in the hopes of attracting a mate (Can you blame them?).

Observe the live crayfish. What does the crayfish do when it feels threatened? How does it use its swimmerets when it is stationary?

Observe the diversity in insect mouthparts etc. Don't worry about being able to identify the individual slides. Try to get a feel for the way modified legs are employed in these animals for a wide variety of sucking, sponging, piercing and biting.

Observe the insects on display. You should be familiar (for lab and lecture) with the common orders of insects listed in this guide.
Tips for Dissection
Crayfish are relatively easy to dissect. Many of you have had ample practice dissecting them at Jazz Fest. Your first task is to determine whether you have a male or female crayfish. Turn the animal on its back, and examine the area of the thorax where the legs join the body. Female crayfish have a circular opening, like a tiny doughnut, which is their seminal receptacle. Male crayfish have a hardened pair of swimmerets (legs on the abdomen) that extends back towards the head, and fits neatly into the groove between the walking legs. These modified legs are stiff, like hard plastic. They are curved like half a soda straw, and when they are joined together, they make a tiny tube through which the sperm travel during copulation. Crayfish literally copulate with their legs.

Place the crayfish in the pan with its dorsal side up. Carefully cut the carapace just to one side of the midline with your scissors, and down along both sides. Peel it back to expose the gills. Notice how the gills interface with the legs, and observe the second underlying row of gills. Cut away the gills where they join the body. Try to find the tiny heart (good luck!). Just under the heart are the gonads (ovaries or testes). Look for the esophagus and stomach (you can always insert a probe through the mouth to see where it emerges). Carefully remove the internal organs, and look for the tiny brain near the base of the antennae.
Crayfish Anatomy

seminal receptacle

rostrum

antennae

eyes

thorax

carapace

chelae

cheliped

walking legs

abdomen

swimmerets

telson

uropod

mandibles

gills

heart

gonads

esophagus

mouth

stomach

brain

Economic, Ecological, and Evolutionary Importance
The many ways that arthropods help us and hurt us are almost too numerous to mention.

They provide seafood, and pollinate fruit crops.

The also cause billions of dollars a year in crop damage.

They cause or carry a host of diseases, such as malaria and the plague.

Ecologically, they are critically important herbivores. Arthropods are the primary converters of plant tissue to animal tissue on the planet!
Consider This
How do segmentation and tagmosis account for the success of arthropods?

Why aren't bugs the size of Buicks?

Trilobites were among the most successful arthropods on Earth, once numbering over 10,000 species. Why are they all gone?

How does the smooth flow of muscle contractions in the moving millipede relate to the evolution of segmentation in annelids and arthropods? ( Hint: Why is a segmented body plan useful for a burrowing animal?)
Links to Explore
There are hundreds of arthropods waiting quietly in obscure corners of the web, ready to pounce on the unwary undergraduate and grab your attention. Where to start? The UCMP server is great for all groups except crustaceans:

An incredible wealth of material on spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites awaits you at the center of the arachnid web. Includes systematics, arachnid databases, stuff for kids, art, literature and movies:

Crustaceans crawl throughout the murky reaches of the cybersea. You'll find a good starting point at the home page of the Crustacean Society, which includes lots of links to these crunchy critters:

There are almost as many insect home pages as there are species of butterflies. A good place to start is Gordon's Entomological home page, which includes a wealth of links to all major orders, and lots of cool stuff about bugs:

Get the drop on jumping spiders, including PG-13 Quicktime movies of their curious courtship rituals at:

Find an faq on scorpions, including beaucoup links, at:

The power of lice compels you, so learn about ticks and mites and things that bite from the Lyme Disease Network's home page at:

Read the Cockroach Control Manual at:

Lots of butterflies and moths have been caught in the web: A good pictorial guide to common species, with tips on their host plants can be found at:

Learn about the moths of North America at:

Order books, videos, caterpillars etc. at:

One of many pages dedicated to raising Painted Lady butterflies:

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Lab 5 - Arthropods Introduction to Arthropods This is not, as the Victorians called it, the Age of Mammals. The planet today is almost completely dominated by a single phylum of animal life. On land, in the sea, even in the air itself, they are the true masters of the Earth.

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Biology/Life Science - Sponge Spicule Lab Kit

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Biology/Life Science - Sponge Spicule Lab Kit

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This two-part classroom activity comes with six distinct species of sponges, each with a unique spicule type. Each kit has enough tissue for approximately 80 students working in pairs. Includes a written procedure for set-up and teacher preparation, along with a student worksheet and key.

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A human-sized barrel jellyfish near Cornwall | The Kid Should See This

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A human-sized barrel jellyfish near Cornwall | The Kid Should See This

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While filming their online series Wild Ocean Week, biologist Lizzie Daly and underwater cinematographer Dan Abbott spotted a human-sized barrel jellyfish ( Rhizostoma pulmo) off the coast of Cornwall, near Falmouth, England in July of 2019. Of the 25 minute encounter, she told The Guardian:

"I've never seen one that big. We had seen a few smaller jellyfish at a beautiful reef nearby, and then out of the murk came this huge, beautiful jellyfish. You just take a double look and ask yourself if it's actually a metre and a half long.

She shared photos and a video of the encounter with the majestic creature, which poses no threat to humans and can be found "in the northeast Atlantic, and in the Adriatic, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov." Understandably, the footage went viral.

Wild Ocean Week is " a fundraising campaign for the Marine Conservation Society of the United Kingdom created by Daly, that was meant to document various marine species off the coast." One more look from The Washington Post:

Watch more videos of sea jellies on TKSST, including Jellyfish Lake, hungry moon jellies, and How Do Jellyfish Sting?

Bonus: When Your Job Is Saving The Ocean and Swim With Manta Rays, the Ocean's Peaceful Giants.

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A human-sized barrel jellyfish near Cornwall | The Kid Should See This

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While filming their online series Wild Ocean Week, biologist Lizzie Daly and underwater cinematographer Dan Abbott spotted a human-sized barrel jellyfish ( Rhizostoma pulmo) off the coast of Cornwall, near Falmouth, England in July of 2019. Of the 25 minute encounter, she told The Guardian : "I've never seen one that big.

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Introduction to Worms

Most people are familiar with earthworms found in garden soil. Although many different kinds of animals are commonly lumped together as "worms," there are several distinct phyla that fit the category. Worms are typically long, thin creatures that get around efficiently without legs. The different phyla of worms display a great range in size, complexity, and body structure. Flatworms (phylum Platyhelminthes) are simple animals that are slightly more complex than a cnidarian. Roundworms (phylum Nematoda) have a slightly more complex body plan. Segmented worms (phylum Annelida) are the most complex animals with worm-like body plans. A study of worms can illuminate a possible history of how some organ systems and body features evolved.

Worms are invertebrate animals with bilateral symmetry. Worms have a definite anterior (head) end and a posterior (tail) end. The ventral surface of worms and other organisms is the bottom side of the body, often closest to the ground. The dorsal surface is located on the upper part of the body facing the sky. The lateral surfaces are found on the left and right sides of the body. Figure 3.35 compares bilateral symmetry in a whale shark and a swimming plychaete worm. Organs for sensing light, touch, and smell are concentrated in the heads of worms. They can detect the kinds of environment they encounter by moving in the anterior direction.

There are six features and systems that reveal an evolving complexity in the body structure of most worms:

1. a mesoderm, an intermediate body layer between the inner (endoderm) and outer (ectoderm) tissue layers that forms muscle tissue

2. a central nervous system guided by a "brain"

3. an excretory system to eliminate some kinds of waste products

4. a complete digestive system, from an anterior mouth to a posterior anus

5. a coelom, a body cavity between the digestive tube and the external body wall that is lined with tissue

6. a circulatory system consisting of a series of tubes (vessels) filled with fluid (blood) to transport dissolved nutrients, oxygen, and waste products around the body rapidly and efficiently

Flatworms: Phylum Platyhelminthes

The phylum Platyhelminthes consists of simple worm-like animals called flatworms (Fig. 3.36). The name Platyhelminthes (pronounced "plat-ee-hel-MIN-theze") is derived from the Greek root word platy meaning flat and the Greek root word helminth meaning worm. Flatworms live on land, in fresh water, in the ocean, and in or on other animals as parasites (e.g., tapeworms). Parasitic flatworms that live on or inside other animals-including humans-can injure or even kill the host organism. Free-living non-parasitic flatworms are typically less than 10 centimeters long. Marine species live buried in the sand or under rocks in shallow water. All free-living flatworms are predators that actively hunt for food. Some live symbiotically with crabs, clams, oysters, shrimp, and barnacles. Some marine flatworms are brilliantly colored (Fig. 3.36 A) while others are drab and blend into the environment (Fig. 3.36 B).

Flatworms are more complex than cnidarians. Cnidarians have two layers of cells, the ectoderm and the endoderm; flatworms have a middle layer called the mesoderm between the other two layers (Fig. 3.16). This extra layer is important because its cells specialize into a muscular system that enables an animal to move around. Beginning with the flatworms, all the animals we will subsequently study have a mesoderm and muscular system. The cells of the ectoderm and endoderm are also more organized than similar cells of cnidarians. For the first time, we see groups of tissues that have evolved to form organs, such as the ones in the digestive, nervous, and excretory systems.

Like the cnidarians, flatworms have a digestive system with only a single opening into the digestive cavity, but in independently living marine flatworms the cavity branches into all parts of the body (Fig. 3.37 B). These flatworms feed through a pharynx. A pharynx is a long, tubular mouthpart that extends from the body, surrounds the food, and tears it into very fine pieces (Fig. 3.37 C and D). Cells lining the digestive cavity finish digesting the food. Then the dissolved nutrients move to other cells of the body. Undigested food passes back out through the mouth, as in the cnidarians. Parasitic tapeworms usually absorb their nutrients directly from the host, while parasitic flukes have retained a digestive system.

Like most self-propelling animals, independent-living flatworms have a central nervous system. A central nervous system consists of a mass of nerve cells, called a ganglion, (in more complex organisms, the ganglion evolves into a brain) in the anterior part of the body, and a nerve cord extending from the brain toward the posterior end of the body (Fig. 3.38). Sensory cells in the head detect changes in the environment. In free-living flatworms, sensory cells that respond to light are clustered in two eyespots in the head. Sensory cells that detect water currents, solid objects, and chemicals are in two flap-like projections on the head called auricles. In self-propelling animals, these sensory organs in the head are the first part of the animal that encounters new surroundings. The ganglion receives information from the sensory structures and sends signals to other parts of the body along two strands of nerve cells running toward the tail. Because the nerve strands are connected by cross-strands in the shape of a stepladder, this kind of nervous system is often called a "nerve ladder."

The excretory system removes waste products and excess water from tissues of flatworms. Flatworms have a surprisingly elaborate system to rid the body of wastes (Fig. 3.39). This network runs the length of the animal on each side and opens to the outside through small pores in the posterior region of the body. Connected to the tubes are tiny cells that move wastes and water from the tissues into the tubes. These cells contain flagella that beat back and forth, creating a current of fluid that constantly moves toward the excretory pores. Under a microscope the flagellar movement looks like a flickering fire, and the structure is called a flame bulb.

Flatworms have no circulatory system. Animals without a circulatory system have limited abilities to deliver oxygen and nutrients to their body cells because of the way that molecules behave. As molecules spread through water, they become less concentrated as they move away from their source. This is known as diffusion. A ball-shaped marine animal would not get adequate oxygen and nutrients to its innermost cells because the cells are too far from the body's surface for molecules to move (diffuse) to them (Fig. 3.40 A). But cnidarians have no problem with diffusion because most cells of their bag-shaped bodies are in direct contact with the water, making the exchange of oxygen and nutrients easy (Fig. 3.40 B). Flatworms, bag-shaped but flattened, also get oxygen and nutrients to their body cells easily because all their cells are close to either their outer surface or their digestive cavity (Fig. 3.40 C). As animals become larger and more complex, diffusion is often no longer an option, and then we begin to see the development of circulatory and respiratory systems.

Roundworms: Phylum Nematoda

Species in the phylum Nematoda (from the Greek root word nema meaning thread) are better known as the roundworms (Fig. 3.41). There are about 25,000 species of nematodes formally described by scientists. Nematodes are found in almost every habitat on Earth. One species was first discovered living inside felt beer coasters in German alehouses. Studies of farmlands have found as many as 10,000 nematodes in 100 cubic centimeters (cm ³) of soil. Nematodes are similarly abundant in marine and freshwater sediments where they serve as important predators, decomposers, and prey for other species like crabs and snails.

Like flatworms, roundworm species adopt either a free-living or a parasitic lifestyle. Parasitic nematodes (Fig. 3.41 A, C, D, and E) include heartworms that infect domestic dogs and the hookworms and pinworms that commonly infect small children. Many nematodes that are parasitic on plants can devastate crops. Some nematodes are cryptobiotic and have demonstrated a remarkable ability to remain dormant for decades until environmental conditions become favorable.

Like the flatworms, nematodes are bilaterally symmetrical. They take their name from their round body cross-sectional shape. Unlike the flatworms in which food and waste enter and exit from the same opening, nematodes have a complete digestive system. An animal with a complete digestive system has a mouth at one end, a long tube with specialized parts in the middle, and an anus at the other end. Complete digestive systems are seen in more complex organisms and offer many advantages over the flatworm's method of digestion. With a complete digestive system an animal can eat while its previous meal digests. Parts of the digestive system can specialize to do different jobs, digesting food in stages (Fig. 3.42). As the food moves along, it is broken into molecules and absorbed by the cells lining the tube. Muscles surrounding the tube contract, squeezing the food and pushing it along in a process called peristalsis. Indigestible wastes pass out through the anus.

Unlike flatworms, nematodes are slender, and they are covered by a protective cuticle. A cuticle is a waxy covering secreted by the epidermis, or outermost cellular tissue. Because of this covering, gas exchange cannot occur directly across the skin as in flatworms. Rather, gas exchange and waste excretion in nematodes occurs by diffusion across the wall of the gut. Although nematodes do have a space in the body between the digestive tract and the body wall, it is not lined with tissue and is not considered to be a true coelom. Thus, nematodes are sometimes referred to as pseudocoelomates (Fig. 3.17 C).

Most worms have two bands of muscles: longitudinal muscles that run the length of the body and circular muscles that form circular bands around the body. Unlike other worms that have two bands of muscles, nematodes only have longitudinal muscles. This explains their characteristic thrashing movement, as they can move only by contracting the long muscles on either side of their body and wriggling forward. The nervous system of nematodes consists of a set of nerves that run the length of the body and connect to anterior ganglia. Free-living nematodes are capable of sensing light with ocelli, and most nematodes have fairly complex chemosensory abilities. Most nematodes are not hermaphrodites, with both sexes in one individual, but are known as dioecious -having individuals of separate sexes. Their chemosensory abilities are very helpful, as they rely on pheromones to locate potential mates.

Segmented Worms: Phylum Annelida

The worms in the phylum Annelida (from the Latin root word annelus meaning ring) typically have complex segmented bodies (Fig. 3.43). The body of an annelid is divided into repeating sections called segments with many internal organs repeated in each segment. Earthworms (class Oligochaeta) are familiar terrestrial members of this phylum and leeches (class Hirudinea) are well-known parasitic members of the phylum, most commonly found in freshwater. The polychaete worms or "bristleworms" (class Polychaeta) are the largest group in the phylum Annelida. They occur mostly in marine and brackish water habitats.

Polychaete (from the Greek root words poly meaning many and chaeta meaning bristle) annelid worms are so named because most of their segments have bristles called chatae or setae. Figure 3.44 shows two examples of polychaete setae. The free-moving (not sessile) polychaetes have muscular flaps called parapodia (from the Greek para meaning near and podia meaning feet) on their sides, and the setae on these parapodia dig into the sand for locomotion. Fireworms are a type of polychaete that have earned their name from stinging bristles on each parapodium (Fig. 3.44 A). These bristles can penetrate human skin, causing irritation, pain and swelling, similar to the irritation caused by exposure to fiberglass.

Tubeworms are sessile polychaetes that live in tubes that they build by secreting the tube material. The tubes, attached to rocks or embedded in sand or mud, may be leathery, calcareous, or sand-covered depending on the worm species (Fig. 3.45). Tubeworms feed by extending tentacles from the tube. Bits of food move along grooves in the tentacles to the mouth. Some tubeworms retract their tentacles when food lands on them. Tubeworms use their parapodia to create currents of water that flow through the tubes to aid in respiration and help clean the tubes. By contrast, the free-living or mobile polychaete worms have a proboscis that can extend from their mouths to catch prey. This is a feeding organ that is often armed with small teeth or jaws on its tip. With their active lifestyle and good defenses, free-moving polychaetes can make their living in a variety of habitats such as mud, sand, sponges, live corals, and algae.

Like flatworms, annelids have a mesoderm with muscle, a central nervous system, and an excretory system. Each of these systems is more complex in the annelid than in flatworms or nematodes. In addition to a more specialized complete digestive system, annelid worms have also evolved body features not found in flatworms or nematodes. These features appear in some form in all larger, more complex animals:

1. a coelom, a body cavity between the digestive tube and the external body wall that is lined with tissue

2. a circulatory system consisting of a series of tubes (vessels) filled with fluid (blood) to transport dissolved nutrients, oxygen, and waste products rapidly and efficiently

Recall that the coelom is a fluid-filled cavity lying between the digestive tube and the outer body tube and surrounded by mesodermal tissue. The digestive tube lies inside the outer body tube. This arrangement is called "tube-within-a-tube construction" (Fig. 3.46). The fluid in the coelom supports the soft tissues of the body wall much as it does in the hydrostatic skeleton of cnidarians. Mesodermal muscles in the wall of the body tube and digestive tube can put pressure on the fluid to aid in movement. In the body wall of the annelids are two types of muscles: circular and longitudinal. When the circular muscles contract, the segment gets longer and narrower. When the longitudinal muscles contract, the segment gets shorter and fatter (Fig. 3.47). These contractions produce the crawling movement of worms. Recall that nematodes lack circular muscles, and can only move by contracting their longitudinal muscles, thus thrashing and wriggling rather than crawling. The setae along the body of polychaetes stick in the substrate, holding parts of the worm in place while other parts move forward.

Annelids have a closed circulatory system in which blood is pumped along by muscles in blood vessels (Fig. 3.48). Blood flows through the microscopic capillaries, picking up food molecules from the digestive tract and oxygen from the skin and transporting them to the cells of the body. The parapodia, the flaps on the sides of the segments, increase the surface area of the skin for respiration. In an efficient circulatory system like this, an animal's internal tissues need not be close to its digestive and respiratory organs because the blood delivers nutrients and oxygen. Such a system lets animals grow much larger than possible in the flatworms, which must rely on diffusion.

The nervous system is also more complex in annelids than in other worm-like phyla. Annelids have a simple brain organ consisting of a pair of nerve clusters in the head region (Fig. 3.49). Nerves link the brain to sensory organs in the head that detect the environment in front of the worm. Earthworms are eyeless, but polychaete annelids have eyes that can distinguish between light and dark. Some polychaete worm eyes can even detect shapes. Nerves also extend from the brain around the digestive tube and along the ventral surface. A ganglion or cluster of nerve cells operates the organs in each segment.

The excretory system of annelid worms consists of a pair of small tubes in each segment. These tubes, called nephridia (from the Greek root word nephrus meaning kidney), are open at both ends. They filter coelomic fluid, which contains useful nutrient molecules along with waste molecules. As the fluid moves through the tube, useful molecules return to the coelom, and waste molecules pass into the water. Although this system appears less complex than a flatworm's, nephridia are actually a more efficient method of handling waste products because they filter fluid, keeping useful molecules inside the body (Fig. 3.50).

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Worms: Phyla Platyhelmintes, Nematoda, and Annelida

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Most people are familiar with earthworms found in garden soil. Although many different kinds of animals are commonly lumped together as "worms," there are several distinct phyla that fit the category. Worms are typically long, thin creatures that get around efficiently without legs.

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Insect Adventures | Ohio 4-H Youth Development

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Insect Adventures | Ohio 4-H Youth Development

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Insect Adventures | Ohio 4-H Youth Development

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Dig a little deeper into the world of insects by learning to love a caterpillar, recognizing relatives of insects, building a new trap, and identifying friendly predators. There's more too! Your collection at this level is 40 insect specimens. 2018. Intermediate level. State fair eligible.

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Do insects feel pain? | Ask an Entomologist

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Do insects feel pain? | Ask an Entomologist

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The last two questions we tackled revolved around the cognitive abilities ( communication, and personality) of arthropods, specifically insects and spiders. These are really tough questions to tackle because a lot of people, even (especially?) those who genuinely like insects and spiders, want to humanize them as a way to identify with them.

I think it's a good thing to want to identify with these animals, so long as we're making proper comparisons. Sometimes, however, this very human impulse can get us into trouble...like this Twitter post by the Featured Creature twitter account.

Jumping #spider holding its baby. < This. This is how you turn a spider #hater into a spider #lover. pic.twitter.com/g7kmyHwcYo

- Featured Creature (@ftcreature) July 22, 2013

This image is typically shared as an example of maternal care in jumping spiders. Although maternal care does exist in this group, it doesn't typically involve the mother carrying them to a new location in the manner shown.

Assuming the picture is real (see Chris M. Buddle's comment), the activity pictured here is most likely cannibalism. Instead of being an endearing picture, this is more of an example of how our desire to identify with insects and spiders can cloud our image of how they behave. This desire has a name, it's called 'anthropomorphism'...which means to imbue human characteristics or motivation onto non-human organisms.

I wanted to open our discussion of insect pain up with that story, because it's a very important point to make. Insects react to the world differently than we do, and when it comes to cognition it's very difficult to separate our motivations from theirs.

The first thing I think we need to do is to define 'pain', because it's not as simple as avoiding injury. During the deepest stages of sleep, people still toss and turn to avoid putting themselves into potentially damaging positions... even if they don't remember the experience. We can also react to stimuli without feeling it, using a reflex arc. It's possible to avoid injury without experiencing pain as we understand it.

The people who study pain in humans have a pretty useful definition of pain, which differentiates between experiencing pain and avoiding injury (which is termed nociception). You can read the full definition here, but I'll remove the relevant snippets:

An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.

...

The inability to communicate verbally does not negate the possibility that an individual is experiencing pain and is in need of appropriate pain-relieving treatment. Pain is always subjective. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life.

...

This definition avoids tying pain to the stimulus. Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain, which is always a psychological state, even though we may well appreciate that pain most often has a proximate physical cause.

Although it might seem to be a little nitpicky, we really should separate pain and nociception. After all...bacteria can avoid toxic substances just as well as animals can.

We know that insects can avoid injuries, and sense most potential sources of damage. The best studied nociceptor is the Drosophila nociceptor TRPA1, which is pretty closely related a gene in mammals which has an identical function. It senses pressure and heat, and reacts to the chemicals which make peppers hot (capscaicin) and mustard spicy (isothiocyanate). I'm not sure how widespread this protein is, because there have been gains and losses in some nociceptors. It's also found in beetles, so painless appears to be somewhat widespread.

Different animals use different receptors to sense different things. Drosophila is repelled by the taste of wasabi, but crayfish are not. Additionally, crayfish do not react to the type of burn that dry ice produces when you get a wart burnt off at the doctor's office. They do, however, respond to heat. It's very likely that crayfish have TRP receptors, but it seems they use different receptors than fruit flies and humans use.

Pain is ultimately an emotional response, so the question of whether insects feel pain as we would understand it really depends on whether they feel emotion. This is where scientists run into problems with the whole 'do insects feel pain' question.

There's a rather obvious philosophical issue which needs to be mentioned, The Problem of Other Minds. I'm not going to spend much time on this, because we can avoid that issue by comparing the behavior of injured insects to injured mammals. Mammals, being animals we *know* feel pain, are the positive control here.

It's important to note how Drosophila defends itself against parasitic wasps. It does this by rolling over them, which makes it impossible for the wasps to get enough leverage to pierce the larva's exoskeleton.

Mammals have a diverse response to pain, often avoiding use of the injured area and responding to different types of pain differently. Drosophila, on the other hand reacts to many different insults by rolling towards the thing that hurts.

If you poke the larvae with a needle, stick them with a soldering iron, bathe them in blue light, or put them in hot water...it's always the same response they have to the wasp ovipositor.

That being said, we can make some further observations about how insects learn to avoid bad situations. Drosophila can be conditioned in a manner to the famous Pavlov experiments. The gene White, which we talked about when we spoke about personality, appears to regulate how extreme the fly experienced a situation. Some White mutations, in addition to regulating some aspects of the fly personality, appears to make flies overestimate how bad the experience was. They learn to avoid stimulus associated with shocks quicker, and un-learn the association slower than flies without the mutation. This only happens with bad memories, though. If you reward (rather than punish) the fly, the White mutants perform pretty similarly to non-mutants.

Interestingly, the human equivalent of White is involved in panic disorders in humans.

With this topic there's a million different ways we could go with this, and there's just not enough room on this blog to go through all of the required material in detail. While researching this article, I found a diagram which sums up this topic rather nicely:

Drosophila does a lot of things in this graph which indicate the presence of pain. It...

can sense when it's injured, using equipment similar to mammals.

can learn to avoid bad things, and seek out good things

can differentiate degrees of 'good' and 'bad' experiences.

However, fruit flies don't seem to...

Have appropriate responses to different degrees of injury

Employ mitigating behaviors, such as rubbing, limping, or guarding the injury.

So it's likely that Drosophila doesn't feel pain...because it doesn't match the positive control, right?

Well, the tobacco hornworm can also do all these things...but it has responses which are more mammal-like than Drosophila.

Noxious stimuli to anterior or posterior segments can evoke a transient withdrawal (cocking) that precedes a strike towards the source of stimulation and may function to maximize the velocity of the strike. More intense noxious stimuli evoke faster, larger strikes and may also elicit thrashing, which consists of large, cyclic, side-to-side movements that are not directed at any target. These are sometimes also associated with low-amplitude quivering cycles. Striking and thrashing sequences elicited by obvious wounding are sometimes followed by grooming-like behavior.

There's also some evidence of self-medication in insects, which usually involves ingesting substances that have a negative effect on their development. So they'll pay a cost to access some sort of mitigating measure, when it comes to parasites or illness. Drosophila happens to be one of these insects.

This article, for me, was one of those really weird articles where I think my opinions changed while doing research for the article. The typical position of entomologists is that insects feeling pain is pretty unlikely. In the past, I've argued a position stronger than the one that Bova argues in his piece...one which was based upon the information similar to what Bova received during his undergraduate training.

However it now appears to me that a lot of the pathways insects use to not only sense injury, but interpret these experiences, and respond to that injury are a lot more similar to my pathways than I had originally realized. The paper on hornworm responses to pain was something I was unaware of, and have never had the opportunity to observe in person. The grooming behavior is what interests me, and it doesn't seem to have been addressed further in the literature.

So based on all of this new information, my response has gone from outright skepticism to something more akin to:

Insects are a very diverse group, with biology that can vary widely between all groups. I would not expect every insect to interpret the world the same way, because they do not all have the same level of complexity.

Among insects, most of the pieces of the evidence required to say that insects feel pain appear in some groups to some extent. However, they do not appear in all groups to the extent which would result in a definitive answer. It would not surprise me to learn that some insects, particularly some of the social insects, would posses all the pieces of evidence.

While we can't say for sure with our current state of knowledge, it seems that the field of insect nociception may be heading in that direction.

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The last two questions we tackled revolved around the cognitive abilities (communication, and personality) of arthropods, specifically insects and spiders. These are really tough questions to tackle because a lot of people, even (especially?) those who genuinely like insects and spiders, want to humanize them as a way to identify with them.

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Ballpoint pen manufacturers don't seem keen on advertising a little known but well-documented feature of their products-they attract termites! Certain ballpoint pens use ink that termites can't seem to resist. Draw a line with an ink pen, and termites will blindly (literally, blindly) follow it across the page. Why do termites follow these ink trails? Here's a look at the science behind this odd termite phenomenon.

How Termites "See" the World

Termites are social insects. They live in colonies, with individual termites performing specific roles to benefit the community. Like ants and honey bees, social termites must communicate with other members of their colony to share important information. But nearly all termites are blind and deaf, so how do they communicate with each other? They use pheromones.

Pheromones are chemical signals that relay information. Termites secrete these communication compounds from special glands on their bodies, and detect pheromones using chemoreceptors on their antennae. Termites produce different pheromones for different purposes: to find mates, to warn other colony members of danger, to determine which termites belong to the colony and which don't, to direct foraging activities, and to locate food sources.

When blind termite workers wander out into the world, they need a way to tell the other termites where they are going, and they also need directions to return home.

Trail pheromones are chemical markers that lead termites along a path to food, and help them find their way back to the colony. Termite workers following trail pheromones will march along the designated path, sniffing their way forward with their antennae.

Why Termites Follow Ink Trails

Termites will occasionally follow trails that weren't produced by other termites at all, if the substance contains compounds that mimic the trail pheromones.

Certain fatty acids and alcohols seem to confuse traveling termites, for example. And quite by accident (presumably), the makers of Papermate® pens have managed to produce ink that reliably mimics a termite trail pheromone. Draw a circle, line, or even a figure eight with one of these magic termite-attracting pens, and the termites will march along your doodle with their antennae to the paper.

Using gas chromatography, scientists have isolated a volatile compound known as 2-phenoxyethanol in certain ballpoint pen inks, and identified it as the likely termite attractant. But 2-phenoxyethanol isn't present in all ink. Felt-tip pens don't seem to attract termites, nor do lines drawn with rollerball pens. Termites won't follow trails made by all ballpoint pen brands, but seem to prefer those made by Papermate® or Bic®. The 2-phenoxyethanol occurs in blue ink only, it seems, because termites aren't inclined to follow trails of black or red ink.

Termite Ink Trails in the Classroom

This termite behavior is a fun way for students to explore and investigate how pheromones work. The "Termite Trails" lab has become a standard inquiry activity in many science classrooms. If you're a teacher interested in trying the "Termite Trails" lab, here are two sample lesson plans for the investigation:

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How to Trick a Termite with a Papermate® Pen

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Ballpoint pen manufacturers don't seem keen on advertising a little known but well-documented feature of their products-they attract termites! Certain ballpoint pens use ink that termites can't seem to resist. Draw a line with an ink pen, and termites will blindly (literally, blindly) follow it across the page.

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Sexual Dimorphism: how males and females look different — The Bug Chicks

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Sexual Dimorphism: how males and females look different — The Bug Chicks

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I promised you dobsonflies! I think these megalopterans are one of the best examples of sexual dimorphism, where males and females have different body forms. These large insects start their lives as larvae in streams. Back east we call them hellgrammites or 'toe-biters' (though some people reserve that name for giant water bugs.) Once they pupate the adults have long wings and awkward fliers. But they are pretty spectacular looking insects.

In dobsonflies, the adult males have elongate mandibles. They use them to battle each other for mating rights like the stag beetles in last week's post.

Females will choose the males with the longest mandibles that can still fly well. No point passing on genes that may inhibit movement when escaping from predators or finding new territory!

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Sexual Dimorphism: how males and females look different - The Bug Chicks

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I promised you dobsonflies! I think these megalopterans are one of the best examples of sexual dimorphism, where males and females have different body forms. These large insects start their lives as larvae in streams. Back east we call them hellgrammites or 'toe-biters' (though some people reserve that name for giant water bugs.)

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Do Bugs Feel Pain? Study Reveals Insects Actually Battle Chronic Pain After Suffering Injury - Study Finds

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Do Bugs Feel Pain? Study Reveals Insects Actually Battle Chronic Pain After Suffering Injury - Study Finds

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SYDNEY - Few people would hesitate to grab a newspaper and smash an annoying fly that's been buzzing around the kitchen for hours. But if you've ever wondered whether bugs feel pain when you attempt to kill them, a new study is the first to prove that not only do insects feel pain from an injury, but they suffer from chronic pain after recovering from one.

Researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia say the discovery builds on prior research from 2003 that found insects experience a sensation related to pain.

"People don't really think of insects as feeling any kind of pain," explains co-author Greg Neely, an associate professor at the university, in a statement. "But it's already been shown in lots of different invertebrate animals that they can sense and avoid dangerous stimuli that we perceive as painful. In non-humans, we call this sense 'nociception', the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli like heat, cold, or physical injury, but for simplicity we can refer to what insects experience as 'pain'.

"So we knew that insects could sense 'pain'," he continues, "but what we didn't know is that an injury could lead to long lasting hypersensitivity to normally non-painful stimuli in a similar way to human patients' experiences."

For the study, the authors damaged one leg on fruit flies and then allowed them to fully heal. They found that even after the fruit flies recovered, their uninjured leg grew more sensitive, a reaction likened to chronic pain in humans.

"After the animal is hurt once badly, they are hypersensitive and try to protect themselves for the rest of their lives," says Neely. "That's kind of cool and intuitive."

Neely and his team then determined exactly how the insects experience such a response.

"The fly is receiving 'pain' messages from its body that then go through sensory neurons to the ventral nerve cord, the fly's version of our spinal cord. In this nerve cord are inhibitory neurons that act like a 'gate' to allow or block pain perception based on the context," says Neely. "After the injury, the injured nerve dumps all its cargo in the nerve cord and kills all the brakes, forever. Then the rest of the animal doesn't have brakes on its 'pain'. The 'pain' threshold changes and now they are hypervigilant. Animals need to lose the 'pain' brakes to survive in dangerous situations but when humans lose those brakes it makes our lives miserable. We need to get the brakes back to live a comfortable and non-painful existence."

This type of chronic pain the flies experience is known as neuropathic pain, which in humans occurs from such conditions as sciatica, shingles, a pinched nerve, spinal cord injuries, or from other kinds of damage to the nervous system. Patients battling neuropathic pain typically report shooting or burning sensations.

Studies like these that help scientists understand the cause of chronic pain could eventually lead to the first treatments focusing on cause, rather than pain relief.

"Importantly now we know the critical step causing neuropathic 'pain' in flies, mice and probably humans, is the loss of the pain brakes in the central nervous system," says Neely. "We are focused on making new stem cell therapies or drugs that target the underlying cause and stop pain for good."

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

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Do Bugs Feel Pain? Study Reveals Insects Fight Chronic Pain After Suffering Injury

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If you've ever wondered whether bugs feel pain when you attempt to kill them, a new study is the first to prove that not only do insects feel an injury, but they suffer from chronic pain after recovering from one.

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The Fungus That Turns Ants Into Zombies Is More Diabolical Than We Realized

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The Fungus That Turns Ants Into Zombies Is More Diabolical Than We Realized

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Carpenter ants of the Brazilian rain forest have it rough. When one of these insects gets infected by a certain fungus, it turns into a so-called "zombie ant" and is no longer in control of its actions. Manipulated by the parasite, an infected ant will leave the cozy confines of its arboreal home and head to the forest floor-an area more suitable for fungal growth. After parking itself on the underside of a leaf, the zombified ant anchors itself into place by chomping down onto the foliage. This marks the victim's final act. From here, the fungus continues to grow and fester inside the ant's body, eventually piercing through the ant's head and releasing its fungal spores. This entire process, from start to finish, can take upwards of ten agonizing days.

"We found that a high percentage of the cells in a host were fungal cells," said Hughes. "In essence, these manipulated animals were a fungus in ants' clothing."

We've known about zombie ants for quite some time, but scientists have struggled to understand how the parasitic fungus, O. unilateralis (pronounced yu-ni-lat-er-al-iss), performs its puppeteering duties. This fungus is often referred to as a "brain parasite," but new research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the brains of these zombie ants are left intact by the parasite, and that O. unilateralis is able to control the actions of its host by infiltrating and surrounding muscle fibers throughout the ant's body. In effect, it's converting an infected ant into an externalized version of itself. Zombie ants thus become part insect, part fungus. Awful, right?

To make this discovery, the scientist who first uncovered the zombie ant fungus, David Hughes from Penn State, launched a multidisciplinary effort that involved an international team of entomologists, geneticists, computer scientists, and microbiologists. The point of the study was to look at the cellular interactions between O. unilateralis and the carpenter ant host Camponotus castaneus during a critical stage of the parasite's life cycle-that phase when the ant anchors itself onto the bottom of leaf with its powerful mandibles.

"The fungus is known to secrete tissue-specific metabolites and cause changes in host gene expression as well as atrophy in the mandible muscles of its ant host," said lead author Maridel Fredericksen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Basel Zoological Institute, Switzerland, in a statement. "The altered host behavior is an extended phenotype of the microbial parasite's genes being expressed through the body of its host. But it's unknown how the fungus coordinates these effects to manipulate the host's behavior."

By referring to the parasite's "extended phenotype," Fredericksen is referring to the way that O. unilateralis is able to hijack an external entity, in this case the carpenter ant, and make it a literal extension of its physical self.

For the study, the researchers infected carpenter ants with either O. unilateralis or a less threatening, non-zombifying fungal pathogen known as Beauveria bassiana, which served as the control. By comparing the two different fungi, the researchers were able to discern the specific physiological effects of O. unilateralis on the ants.

Using electron microscopes, the researchers created 3D visualizations to determine location, abundance, and activity of the fungi inside the bodies of the ants. Slices of tissue were taken at a resolution of 50 nanometers, which were captured using a machine that could repeat the slicing and imaging process at a rate of 2,000 times over a 24-hour period. To parse this hideous amount of data, the researchers turned to artificial intelligence, whereby a machine-learning algorithm was taught to differentiate between fungal and ant cells. This allowed the researchers to determine how much of the insect was still ant, and how much of it was converted into the externalized fungus.

The results were truly disturbing. Cells of O. unilateralis had proliferated throughout the entire ant's body, from the head and thorax right down to the abdomen and legs. What's more, these fungal cells were all interconnected, creating a kind of Borg-like, collective biological network that controlled the ants' behavior.

"We found that a high percentage of the cells in a host were fungal cells," said Hughes in a statement. "In essence, these manipulated animals were a fungus in ants' clothing."

But most surprising of all, the fungus hadn't infiltrated the carpenter ants' brains.

"Normally in animals, behavior is controlled by the brain sending signals to the muscles, but our results suggest that the parasite is controlling host behavior peripherally," explained Hughes. "Almost like a puppeteer pulls the strings to make a marionette move, the fungus controls the ant's muscles to manipulate the host's legs and mandibles."

As to how the fungus is able to navigate the ant towards the leaf, however, is still largely unknown. And in fact, that the fungus leaves the brain alone may provide a clue. Previous work showed that the fungus may be chemically altering the ants' brains, leading Hughes' team to speculate that the fungus needs to the ant to survive long enough to perform its final leaf-biting behavior. It's also possible, however, that the fungus needs to leverage some of that existing ant brain power (and attendant sensorial capabilities) to "steer" the ant around the forest floor. Future research will be required to turn these theories into something more substantial.

"This is an excellent example of how interdisciplinary research can drive our knowledge forward," Charissa de Bekker, an entomologist at the University of Central Florida not affiliated with the new study, told Gizmodo. "The researchers used cutting-edge techniques to finally confirm something that we thought to be true but weren't sure about: that the fungus O. unilateralis does not invade or damage the brain."

de Bekker says this work confirms that something much more intricate is going on, and that the fungus might be controlling the ant by secreting compounds that can work as neuromodulators. Data gleaned from the fungal genome points to this conclusion as well.

"This means the fungus might produce a wealth of bioactive compounds that could be of interest in terms of novel drug discovery," said de Bekker. "I am, thus, very excited about this work!"

An authority on the zombie ant fungus herself, de Bekker also released new research this week. Her new study, published in PLOS One and co-authored with David Hughes and others, looked into the molecular clock of the Ophiocordyceps kimflemingiae fungus (a recently named species of the O. unilateralis complex) to see if the daily rhythms, and thus biological clocks, are an important aspect of the parasite-host interactions studied by biologists.

"In addition to confirming that the fungus indeed has a molecular clock, we found that this results in the daily oscillation of certain genes," de Bekker told Gizmodo. "While some of them are active during the day-time, others are active during the night-time. Interestingly, we found that the fungus especially activates genes encoding for secreted proteins during the night-time. These are the compounds that possibly interact with the host's brain! The fungus, therefore, does not just release bioactive compounds to manipulate behavior, but there seems to be a precise timing to it as well."

There's clearly still lots to learn about this insidious parasite and how it hijacks its insectoid hosts, but as these recent studies attest, we're getting steadier closer to the answer-one that's clearly disturbing in nature.

[ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PLOS One]

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The Fungus That Turns Ants Into Zombies Is More Diabolical Than We Realized

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Carpenter ants of the Brazilian rain forest have it rough. When one of these insects gets infected by a certain fungus, it turns into a so-called "zombie ant" and is no longer in control of its actions.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology, We use science to understand the world, to find new ways to make conservation work, and to involve people who share our passion. We offer help for birders through All About Birds website on all bird info, questions, etc.

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Celebrate Urban Birds | We're All Close To Birds!

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Celebrate Urban Birds | We're All Close To Birds!

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Celebrate Urban Birds | We're All Close To Birds!

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Black Swamp Bird Observatory's Ohio Young Birders Club - HOME

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Black Swamp Bird Observatory's Ohio Young Birders Club - HOME

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Black Swamp Bird Observatory's Ohio Young Birders Club

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Learn more about Black Swamp Bird Observatory at www.bsbo.org

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

​Hunt's is donating 5% of all BSBO related sales back to BSBO's Ohio Young Birders Club through the end of 2020! ​

​To reach BSBO's personal sales consultant, contact Noah Buchanan, Hunt's Outside Sales Developer, at 781-462-2356.

​Noah can assist you with questions regarding cameras, flashes, lenses, and other types of photography equipment.
When you call, please be sure to use the code "BSBO".

The Ohio EPA's Ohio Environmental Education Fund (OEEF) awarded Black Swamp Bird
Observatory full funding of $35,000 for our Ohio Young Birders Club expansion.
​
The OEEF grant fund will enable BSBO to achieve measurable objectives that support
the overall goal of expanding and enhancing the OYBC, building a brighter future
for bird conservation.

Helping to fledge the next generation of birders!

September/October 2020 Bird ID Photo Quiz
"Birds from Detroit"
by Travis Kaye, OYBC NW Chapter

(Click image to enlarge.)

Directions: Identify each bird species.
​
Bird 1: This is a bird that can be found in Ohio and Michigan during fall and spring migration.
This birds' population increased drastically during the deforestation of the United States.

Bird 2: This is a bird that you can see almost anywhere however, they prefer marshy habitats.

Bird 3: This species prefers field habitats, but through my own observations I believe they are adapting to humans and now can live in semi-open areas.

Bird 4: This is one of the first birds to arrive in Ohio during spring migration and is one of the last migrants to leave in the fall.

To submit your answers send an email to info@ohioyoungbirders.org with [September/October 2020 Quiz] in the subject line or, mail in your answer to OYBC Photo Quiz,13551 W. St. Rt. 2, Oak Harbor, OH 43449.

Winning entries will be put into a drawing to win a copy of
a Kaufman Field Guide, a mystery field guide chosen by BSBO staff,
​or a Black Swamp Bird Observatory cap!
PLUS assorted birder swag from our amazing sponsors!
​* Must be an OYBC member to be eligible to win a prize

July/August 2020
"Bottoms Up"

Correct Answers:
1. Horned Grebe
2. Palm Warbler
3. Common Yellowthroat
4. Black-throated Blue Warbler
5. Northern Parula

OUR SPONSORS

OYBC Facebook Page

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Black Swamp Bird Observatory's Ohio Young Birders Club

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Learn more about Black Swamp Bird Observatory at www.bsbo.org ​Hunt's is donating 5% of all BSBO related sales back to BSBO's Ohio Young Birders Club through the end of 2020! ​ ​To reach BSBO's personal sales consultant, contact Noah Buchanan, Hunt's Outside Sales Developer, at 781-462-2356.

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How to identify a bird in 5 steps | MNN - Mother Nature Network

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How to identify a bird in 5 steps | MNN - Mother Nature Network

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Identifying a bird can be a challenge, even for experienced birders. And if you're new to using field guides, it can be daunting to figure out where to even begin searching in the hundreds of pages of species.

There's a great technique for making positive identifications. It's all about knowing what to look for and in what order. Keep this checklist handy and follow it in order, and you'll be able to name that mystery bird!

1. Size

The first and easiest place to start is size. Look at the bird and compare it to the size of species you're familiar with. Is the bird smaller than a sparrow, about the size of a pigeon, bigger than a goose?

If you're still unsure about the bird's size, look for an object near the bird you can use for comparison. For instance, if the bird is near something like a rock, a sign or a flower, you can go measure that object and get a rough idea of the size of the bird.

2. Overall shape

Look at the silhouette of the bird and compare this to species you know. Is it shaped like a robin, a heron, a duck, an owl? The overall shape of the bird can go a long way in narrowing down which section to look through in your field guide.

Next, look at the details of bird's shape. Zoom in on the shape of bill, wings, body, tail and legs. Again, it can be easier to notice and remember details if you compare these aspects of the bird you're looking at to the bird species you already know.

Is the tail long or short compared to the body? Are the legs long or short, slender or sturdy? Is the bill bulbous like a cardinal, thin like a hummingbird, hooked like a hawk or flat like a duck?

3. General behavior

Where the bird is located in a habitat and what it's doing can reveal information to help narrow down the species possibilities. Some of the questions about general behavior to ask include:

Is the bird in a flock or solitary?

Is it staying close to brushy cover or is it out in the open?

If it is in a tree, is it staying high in the canopy or lower in the branches?

If it is eating, can you tell if it is eating seeds, insects, nectar, plants or something else? Is it feeding on the ground or in water?

Notice everything you can about what the bird is doing because these subtle details will help distinguish the general category of bird and perhaps between species that look very similar but act differently.

4. Habitat and range

Next, you can rapidly rule out possible species by noting the habitat type and considering the range of the species.

What kind of place is this bird in? Is it a grassy plain, a marsh, a conifer forest or an oak woodland? A desert-adapted roadrunner is unlikely to be hanging out on a beach, just as a great blue heron is unlikely to be found on a mountain top.

The habitat type is equally helpful with subtle differences between species, too. Let's say there are two sparrows that both look like they could be your bird, but one is found in an arid habitat and the other is found only in forested habitats. You'll know which is your bird based on where you saw it.

Now let's say both of the two candidate sparrow species are found in conifer forest. You can narrow it down based on the range of the species. Is the conifer forest in the upper Midwest or along the West Coast? You can exclude candidate species that are very rarely or never found in the area where you're birding.

5. Color and field marks

Color comes last because many bird species have differently colored plumage based on sex, age, season and other factors. The very same male bird might look completely different in April when he has his colorful breeding plumage versus November when he's wearing his winter plumage.

Did you know bald eagles don't get their signature black body and white head until they're around seven years old? It can be easy to mistake a juvenile bald eagle in its mottled brown plumage for a somewhat similarly colored golden eagle - yet size, wing shape and habitat helps distinguish them.

Some bird species can look incredibly similar to one another. There's a reason why birders use the term LBJ, which stands for little brown job, to describe so many little brown sparrow species! Only the most subtle differences in markings - such as a pale gray versus a white marking near the eye - might distinguish two species from one another. That's why noticing other identifying characteristics first is critical, and noting color details will assist in finalizing a positive ID on a bird.

With the five checklist items above, you'll know where to begin to look in a field guide and how to pick out your species among similar species. However, if you need additional clues, you can include:

Listening to its song or other vocalizations

Watching its flight pattern - how it flaps its wings and maneuvers in flight

Watching its flight silhouette - its overall shape in flight

These extra clues can feel difficult to learn at first but become much easier with experience - and can be your best tool for distant birds.

Want to practice using this list? Here's a quick quiz. Visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's page on the Bewick's wren and Marsh wren. Don't they look incredibly similar? Now use your checklist and the information on the pages to distinguish the two species. Note the difference between bill and tail length (overall shape), their different feeding preferences (general behavior), their different habitat preferences, where their ranges do and don't overlap, and the thickness of the white "eyebrows" (field marks). Play the sound files and notice how different their songs are, as well.

How to identify a bird in 5 steps

Use this quick checklist in order, and you'll soon master the process of identifying a bird species.

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Identifying a bird can be a challenge, even for experienced birders. And if you're new to using field guides, it can be daunting to figure out where to even begin searching in the hundreds of pages of species. There's a great technique for making positive identifications.

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Bird watchers of all ages count birds to create a real-time snapshot of where birds are. Count birds anytime, anywhere, with eBird "

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Lesson Plan: Owl Pellet Dissection | California Academy of Sciences

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Lesson Plan: Owl Pellet Dissection | California Academy of Sciences

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What animals did your barn owl eat this week? Observe the bones it swallowed to identify its prey!

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Minnesota Bird Songs | Minnesota Conservation Volunteer | Minnesota DNR

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Minnesota Bird Songs | Minnesota Conservation Volunteer | Minnesota DNR

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Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

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Minnesota Bird Songs | Minnesota Conservation Volunteer

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This interactive illustration will help users identify and listen to 24 birds common to Minnesota.

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Birds use massive magnetic maps to migrate – and some could cover the whole world

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Birds use massive magnetic maps to migrate – and some could cover the whole world

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Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa - and then repeat that same journey again, year after year, to nest in exactly the same place that they chose on their first great journey.

The remarkable navigational precision displayed by these tiny birds - as they travel alone over stormy seas, across vast deserts, and through extremes in weather and temperature - has been one of the enduring mysteries of behavioural biology.

We know that birds buffeted by winds so much that they're significantly displaced from their migratory route are able to realign their course if they've already performed one migration. This has suggested that birds' navigational abilities - some of which is built around a sense of compass direction - includes a mechanism for finding their way back home from parts of the world they've never before visited.

Now, our new study of Eurasian reed warblers has found that this remarkable ability involves a "magnetic map" that works like our human system of coordinates. Surprisingly, our study found that these birds understand the magnetic field of places thousands of miles into territory they've never before visited - suggesting some birds could possess a "global GPS system" that can tell them how to get home from anywhere on Earth.

Author provided (No reuse)

Mind maps

It's long been known that adult birds develop some sort of navigational map to help them migrate. How they do this has remained controversial. Several cues have been proposed as guides for migratory birds - including odours, infra-sound, and even variations in gravity.

However, a gathering body of evidence has indicated that the Earth's magnetic field is one of the likeliest solutions to this mystery. It has been suggested that different parameters of the Earth's magnetic field could form a grid, which birds follow, of north-south and east-west lines.

That's because magnetic intensity (the strength of the magnetic field) and magnetic inclination (the angle formed between the magnetic field lines and the surface of the Earth, also called the "dip" angle) both run approximately north to south. Magnetic declination - the difference between the direction to the magnetic north pole and the geographical north pole - provides the east-west axis.

Despite largely agreeing that certain birds navigate via the Earth's magnetic field, scientists haven't worked out precisely what sensory apparatus they use to detect it - or whether multiple systems are used to detect different parameters of the field. Other animals, like turtles, can also sense the magnetic field, but the same uncertainties apply.

Read more: Migrating birds use a magnetic map to travel long distances

Regardless, if birds have learned that magnetic intensity increases as they go north, they should be able to detect their position on the north-south axis wherever they happen to be. Similarly, if they experience a declination value that is greater than anything they've previously experienced, they should know they're further east. On this basis, the theory is that they can calculate their position on the grid and correct their orientation.

This would mean that birds essentially navigate using a system similar to our Cartesian coordinates - the basis of modern GPS navigation. If this coordinates theory is accurate, it would mean that birds should be able to use their knowledge of magnetic field parameters to estimate their location anywhere on Earth - through the extrapolation or extension of their navigational rules.

To date, however, there has been no clear evidence that birds can use the magnetic field in this way. But our new study on the migratory Eurasian reed warbler - or the Acrocephalus scirpaceus - is the first to show clear evidence that they can in fact do this.

Untrue north

To prove the coordinates theory, we used a technique called "virtual displacement". We tested birds' orientation behaviour by placing them in a small cage called an "Emlen funnel". When a bird tries to fly from the cage, it leaves scratches in the direction it's trying to fly towards.

Remarkably, we found that this corresponded to the direction that it would be trying to migrate in the wild, which we know from previous experiments. To test whether birds plot their course from takeoff using magnetic fields, we put the Emlen funnels inside a "Helmholtz coil" - a device that allows us to change the nature of the magnetic field in the immediate vicinity of the bird.

Author provided (No reuse)

In doing so, we created a virtual displacement. The bird does not move: it is tested at the site where it is captured, with all other variables remaining the same - apart from the magnetic field, which we changed to match a location far to the north east of their normal range. We chose the location so that it would be far beyond any magnetic field the warblers would have previously experienced.

Only if the birds were able to map their location based on the magnetic field around them would they recognise their displacement - and indeed they did, shifting their takeoff to fly in the "wrong" direction in the real world, but the "right" direction in the magnetic world we'd created around their Emlen funnels.

Winging it

While this cue may be relevant for reed warblers and other migratory songbirds, it is by no means the only navigation system used by birds. Other birds, including seabirds and homing pigeons, have been shown to require olfactory cues (scents and smells) to navigate. At this stage, we don't understand the reason behind these different preferences.

And, while we are closer to understanding the mystery of how birds navigate using magnetic cues, it still remains something of a mystery as to how they sense the magnetic field. It's been suggested that birds sense magnetic values through a light-sensitive molecule called cryptochrome, or through sensory cells containing magnetic iron oxide particles - but definitive evidence for either of these has not yet been provided.

However, behavioural evidence continues to underscore how the Earth's magnetic field is crucial in helping some birds make their epic journeys to breed each year - providing a global positioning system that might just provide birds with a complete navigational map of the world.

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Birds use massive magnetic maps to migrate - and some could cover the whole world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every year, billions of songbirds migrate thousands of miles between Europe and Africa - and then repeat that same journey again, year after year, to nest in exactly the same place that they chose on their first great journey.

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Scientist’s Scoop: Nudibranchs - Colorful Creatures of the Sea | California Academy of Sciences

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Scientist’s Scoop: Nudibranchs - Colorful Creatures of the Sea | California Academy of Sciences

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Citizen Science: Be Part of Something Bigger : Great Backyard Bird Count

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Citizen Science: Be Part of Something Bigger : Great Backyard Bird Count

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The Curious Strength of a Sea Sponge’s Glass Skeleton | Quanta Magazine

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The Curious Strength of a Sea Sponge’s Glass Skeleton | Quanta Magazine

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Inside of an earthworm — Science Learning Hub

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Inside of an earthworm — Science Learning Hub

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The earthworm's body is well adapted for life in the soil. Click on the labels to see images and learn more. Click the green button to see what's on the outside of an earthworm.

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Earthworm: Body wall, Coelom, Locomotion & digestive system | Study&Score

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Earthworm: Body wall, Coelom, Locomotion & digestive system | Study&Score

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Earthworm: Body wall, Coelom, Locomotion & digestive system | Study&Score

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The body wall of the earthworm covers the internal parts and also provides protection. Mucus protects the body wall from bacteria and other pathogens that lie on the body wall. Mucus also assists in respiration by keeping the skin moist. Body wall also serves as a receptor organ.

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Microsoft Word - Sea Urchin Dissection Protocol.doc

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Microsoft Word - Sea Urchin Dissection Protocol.doc

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Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names

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Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names

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ENT 425 | General Entomology | Resource Library (Tutorials)

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ENT 425 | General Entomology | Resource Library (Tutorials)

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Phasmatodea | The World of Stick and Leaf Insects

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Phasmatodea | The World of Stick and Leaf Insects

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Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Flickr Follow us on Tumbr

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Flatworms Can Reproduce by Ripping Themselves in Half - The Atlantic

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Flatworms Can Reproduce by Ripping Themselves in Half - The Atlantic

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Meet the marine worm with 100 butts that can each grow eyes and a brain | Live Science

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Meet the marine worm with 100 butts that can each grow eyes and a brain | Live Science

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Should we wipe mosquitoes off the face of the Earth? | Zika virus | The Guardian

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Should we wipe mosquitoes off the face of the Earth? | Zika virus | The Guardian

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When an Aedes aegypti mosquito bites you, she - because only the females, which need blood as nutrients for their offspring, bite - will probe your skin with her proboscis as many as 20 times. Two pairs of sharp cutting edges, the fascicle, break the skin and then search for a blood vessel, withdrawing and re-entering until a suitable target is found. When the blood starts to flow, a salivary tube delivers a protein that stops it clotting. The mosquito holds still and then begins to suck; in 90 seconds' time, she feels full, and stops. And then, if you are in parts of South and Central America and bang out of luck, you will have Zika.

It's a horrible idea, and one that will draw shudders from anyone who has ever been bitten by a mosquito - which is to say, just about everyone. In the entire animal kingdom, the mosquito occupies a special place as receptacle for our hatred and disgust. Even the great and generous EO Wilson, author of the touchstone argument for preserving biodiversity, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, makes an exception for anopheles gambiae, which spreads malaria in Africa. "Keep their DNA for future research," he writes, "and let them go."

When Wilson thus hardens his heart, he speaks for us all. Where we revere and anthropomorphise such brutal predators as sharks, tigers and bears, we view these tiny ectoparasites as worthless, an evolutionary accident with no redeeming or adorable characteristics. No one ever had a cuddly mosquito. Thanks to malaria, they have probably helped to kill more than half of all humans ever to have lived. Today, according to the Gates foundation, the diseases they carry kill about 725,000 people a year, 600,000 of them victims of malaria. They are, as such, the only creature responsible for the deaths of more humans than humans themselves; we only manage to kill about 475,000 a year. This deadly work is carried out all over the planet: mosquitoes are found on every continent except Antarctica. And now there is Zika, which can lead to microcephaly and its associated physical deformities in unborn children, and for which there is no vaccine. This new horror has prompted fresh attention to the vexed question of how to defeat them. And that consideration leads to an unsentimental thought that we would entertain about no other creature: can't we wipe them off the face of the Earth?

Click here for a video explaining the Zika outbreak. Guardian

"I don't think most people would have any qualms about totally eliminating them," says Professor Hilary Ranson, head of vector biology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. "I spend most of my time trying to keep them alive and study them, but that's in order to try to kill them. Ultimately I wouldn't be too sentimental." Professor Steve Lindsay, a public-health entomologist at the University of Durham agrees: "I have no problem with taking out the mosquito."

In reality, as Lindsay and Ranson are quick to point out, the total extinction of all mosquito species would be as senseless as it would be impossible. Of the 3,000 varieties on the planet, only 200 or so bite us; only Aedes aegypti, and perhaps the more common Culex quinquefasciatus, are thought to carry Zika. Besides, as Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at the University of Essex, points out: "In lots of environments, especially the Arctic north, where their abundance is utterly dispiriting, they are a vital source of food for animals higher up the food chain." A total mosquito apocalypse would be a catastrophe.

There are extinction options. It wouldn't be easy, but we shouldn't forget about it

But what about a narrower specicide, wiping out Aedes aegypti, and dealing a devastating blow to Zika, dengue fever and chikungunya alike? Well, that might be much more desirable - and much more achievable. "We've got really good new weapons," says Dr Jo Lines, reader of malaria control and vector biology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "There are extinction options. It wouldn't be easy, but we shouldn't forget about it."

For Lines, there is a more pressing case for the eradication of aegypti, as a carrier of dengue fever, than any other species of mosquito. "There is no visible end to this except a war against aegypti," he says. "Otherwise this is going to go on for a thousand years." He points out that because aegypti are thoroughly adapted to a man-made environment, unlike the anopheles variety that carry malaria, they will only become more prevalent as the human population and its accompanying urban sprawl grow. "The other things we'll build out. West Nile, malaria ... but this is not going to fade away. These things are like rats and pigeons. We give them their home and food."

So how, exactly, would we go about it? For the specicide advocates, the most promising means of attack lies in a cutting-edge technology known as a gene drive, the subject of much excited reporting in recent weeks. And no wonder, so seductively dystopian is its premise: that a species can be eradicated by altering the genetic code of males in captivity so that they will only be able to produce sterile offspring, then releasing them into the wild to mate with unsuspecting females, rendering the next generation barren. Oxitec, a British company that has pioneered this kind of genetic modification, has been conducting trials since 2009, and has a production facility in Campinas, Brazil. And it is not alone.

"It really has been a gamechanger," says Andrea Crisanti, professor of molecular parasitology at Imperial College London. "We are able to modify the gene with unprecedented precision and flexibility." Crisanti, a leading expert in the field, has focused his own work on a similar mechanism that fights the malaria-carrying Anopheles gambiae, but he says that it could be exported to other species as well. "There are lots of advantages. If it doesn't work, nobody has to worry: if they can't breed, the GM is selected out. If it works, in theory you have total extinction. And if people are concerned about that, you can keep some in the laboratory and reintroduce them. So it is totally reversible." He gives a small laugh, and sounds freshly amazed at the power of the technology at his fingertips. "We can edit nature," he says. "This is an incredible new development."

There are practical impediments to this plan at the moment, though. "The number of sterile males you'd have to release is just phenomenal," says Ranson. All the same, the approach could make huge inroads in controlling the population, and extinction may be a realistic goal. Crisanti acknowledges the risks that his work brings with it. "But on the battlefield of risk-management, you have to accept that any measure has a risk to be balanced against the benefit. There is a risk we all rush, and that shouldn't be done. We shouldn't implement this on an emotional basis just because we don't have anything else. And we shouldn't take shortcuts in the regulatory process. We don't want it to backfire when it could be a gamechanger for public health."

If people are concerned, you can keep some in the lab and reintroduce them. It is totally reversible. We can edit nature

Andrea Crisanti

Still, talk of "editing nature" will unnerve those who are naturally suspicious of such radical moves, and for whom the term "genetic modification" is an automatic red flag. Some fear that the precise effects on the mosquitoes' ecosystems are still hazy (while they might be our nemeses, there are fish that think they're delicious). But most biologists are confident that such fears are misplaced. "Ecosystems would adapt," says Ranson. "There are so many similar mosquito species that don't transmit disease that something else would fulfil that niche without doing any major harm."

Lines agrees: "Everywhere they exist, apart from parts of east Africa, they are an invasive species. So getting rid of them would be a boon to the ecosystem. What are the local things that eat aegypti that might say, 'Now we're hungry'? Well, there are fish and insects that eat the larvae and bats that eat the adults, and birds and geckos, but all of those predators have got other things to eat."

For others, the attention-grabbing qualities of a genetically modified mosquito spreading its poisoned seed are a source of more frustration than wonder; a distraction from on-the-ground efforts that could make a substantial difference in the fight against Zika and dengue fever right away. "What it mainly is is irritating," says Lindsay. "Everyone talks about vaccines and GM, but actually we can control this vector by much simpler means." Lindsay points out that aegypti were eliminated from much of South America in the 1960s by the simple mechanism of spraying containers with oil, kerosene and, later, the controversial pesticide DDT. Today, with a much larger human population and some pesticide resistance, that process is much more difficult; above all, the growth in the population of aegypti is down to our rapid increase in plastic consumption; it provides the mosquitos with an ideal breeding ground.

"There is so much misinformation out there," Lindsay says. "You see pictures of large open areas of stagnant water. But that's not where the danger is. This thing breeds in small containers: flowerpots, gutters, tyres, water bottles. It's about screening buildings, putting up nets, spraying insecticide in laundry areas. That's not something for health professionals: that's about educating and empowering communities so that they can reduce the risk themselves." So vexed is Lindsay by the way this crucial message is, in his view, being drowned out, that he and a group of colleagues have written a letter to the Lancet, shortly to be published, urging a renewed focus on these less exotic measures. "We have tools available," it reads, "that we can use to defeat this mosquito vector today."

Professor Trudie Lang, a senior research fellow at Oxford and head of the Global Health Network, tells a similar story. Her research is focused on improving public health, and connecting researchers and health workers in developing countries. It is, again, an unglamorous specialism - but a critical one, for the fight against Zika as much as anything else.

"There's this incredible study on foetal scans and baby measurements," Lang explains, "which will mean that at least people can interpret the scans properly; if the problem is with foetal development then we have to know how that occurs. But these kinds of big studies are really underfunded, and because this kind of research doesn't get any attention, that's why we are where we are with Zika. The really hi-tech, GM stuff - bring it on. Marvellous. It gets people excited, it gets the [research] papers in Nature. But the normal, everyday stuff - the pragmatic, frontline research - can make some of the biggest differences. And it's very, very difficult to get funding to support research-capacity development." Read the deadly last three words of that quote and you will see exactly where the problem lies. "The trouble," Lang says with a sigh, "is that it just isn't sexy."

An Aedes aegypti mosquit, photographed in a lab at the University of El Salvador. Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

It is hard to prove a direct causal link between the exoticised enthusiasm for wiping out a species on the one hand and the underfunding of such crucial work on the other. All the same, there is a certain bitter irony that in an attempt to beat a disease whose impact will be felt most keenly by women and their unborn children, and which has been exacerbated by a shortage of funding for studies that would focus on the wellbeing of women in developing countries, we are contemplating a macho solution that entails sending male mosquitoes to impregnate as many females as possible, with the ultimate ambition of wiping the enemy off the face of the Earth.

Whatever the priorities, no scientist disputes that if the technology were to be perfected, the gene-drive plan would be a remarkable boon to public health. Yet there may be other, more abstract, objections contained in the eerie idea of that word: extinction, the permanent eradication of a species that has evolved and survived for thousands of years. Melanie Challenger, author of On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature, travelled from England to South America to the Antarctic to think about how we contend with the elimination of the species. "Is there a more intrinsic philosophical reason why we shouldn't drive an animal to extinction?" she asks. "My instinct is: yes. If a part of our brain lights up with caution, that's a really good instinct, and we should heed it. I don't think 'love of nature' is a good reason not to do it. But I do think there's something more robust: the sanctity of life. If you start getting cavalier about the existence of a living being, if we start to think it's OK to eradicate something because it's a threat to us, we put other ideas about the sanctity of life in question. And because that's ultimately an artificial, human concept, it needs to be cherished."

Yet even Challenger acknowledges that such arguments might seem a bit abstract to the mother of a child who will be deformed because of Zika, or killed by malaria. "I'm a mum," she says, "and no one can understand more than a mother the heartache and importance and power of keeping your children alive." Crisanti has a ready riposte to such abstract concerns: if we had already wiped out aegypti, would we ever contemplate reintroducing them? "When you reverse the argument," he says, "I think it's clear."

In the end, if the technical and ecological objections can be overcome, it seems unlikely that philosophical arguments for the sanctity of aedes aegypti will hold sway. The mosquito has so ravaged us, for so long, that for most people it has exhausted all rights of appeal. Pretty, whose work straddles the arts and sciences, has also written about extinction. In his book, The Edge of Extinction, he considers how different cultures deal with the loss of species and habitats that surround them. It is fair to say that he is an advocate of conservation. But even he has his limit. "If one has a hierarchy of thoughts," he says, "the first would be that it would be desirable if we humans had a lighter impact and that any loss is one that should be deeply worrying. And in most cases you can stop at that point. But here you can ask the second question: if there was a loss of a whole species, would there be a human benefit? And in this case, the human benefit is so great that I think you have to say: 'OK, I can hold these two thoughts at once.'"

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Should we wipe mosquitoes off the face of the Earth?

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Even before the Zika virus, mosquitoes were the deadliest creatures on the planet. But gene modification means these blood suckers' days might be numbered. Is it dangerous to talk about 'editing nature', or should we consider eradicating them for good?

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Genetic engineering test with mosquitoes ‘may be game changer’ in eliminating malaria | Malaria | The Guardian

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Genetic engineering test with mosquitoes ‘may be game changer’ in eliminating malaria | Malaria | The Guardian

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Scientists have successfully wiped out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes by using a radical form of genetic engineering to render the females infertile - in the most advanced and largest ever test of use of the technology to fight the disease.

As well as bringing fresh hope in the fight against one of the world's biggest killers, the study lays the foundations for further trials of gene-drive technology, which could mean self-destroying mosquitoes being released into the wild within 10 years.

"This is a very exciting development," said Dr Thomas Price, a senior lecturer in evolution, ecology and behaviour at the University of Liverpool, who was not involved in the research. "There are still lots of ethical and regulatory questions that need answering. But none of those really matter if it is impossible to build gene drives that are effective in the field. This is a major step towards achieving that."

Despite the reduction in malaria over recent decades there were still 229m cases of the disease in 2019, and 409,000 deaths.

Dr Drew Hammond, at Imperial College London, who led the new research, said: "Gene drive is a self sustaining and fast acting technology that can work alongside existing tools such as bed nets, insecticides and vaccines, and could be a game changer in bringing about malaria elimination."

The development aims to bypass natural selection by plugging in a set of genetic instructions that will rapidly spread through a population and pass on a particular trait - in this case infertility - far faster than could be achieved through conventional selective breeding.

The idea was first mooted in 2003 but hit a roadblock when scientists discovered that their gene drives disappeared after several generations because they introduced mutations that prevented them from spreading further. Rather than giving up, Hammond and his colleagues began searching for a better target to insert their gene drive into.

Some areas of DNA are highly conserved, meaning that any mutation is likely to seriously damage their owner. Picking one of these areas could enable gene drives to survive longer.

The scientists identified a crucial sex determination gene called doublesex, which is identical across individual Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, a species responsible for most of the malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa. Females mosquitoes carrying thegene drive in this gene are unable to produce offspring.

In 2018 Hammond's team used the doublesex gene drive to crash a population of about 600 A gambiae mosquitoes housed in a small cage. Within seven to 11 generations no more offspring were produced.

The same year field trials were launched in Burkina Faso by the Target Malaria research consortium, which includes the Imperial team. This involved releasing genetically modified, sterile, male mosquitoes into the wild, to test whether they could survive, and continue to be tracked - an essential step towards eventual field trials of gene-drive organisms, which have not yet taken place.

The new research, published in Nature Communications, is another stepping stone towards that goal. Hammond and his colleagues tested whether the same gene drive they trialled in 2018 would spread and cause the same population collapse in closer to real-world conditions. Such testing has been flagged by the World Health Organization as a critical step before gene drive technologies can be tested in the wild.

The scientists released relatively small numbers of modified mosquitoes into much larger indoor cages housing hundreds of wild-type mosquitoes of different ages, at a research facility near Siena, central Italy. The cages were designed to entice the mosquitoes into complex mating, resting, foraging and egg-laying behaviours that would be impossible in small cages.

The researchers tracked how quickly the gene drive spread, and looked at its impact on female fertility and population decline.

"This is something that has never been achieved before - a single release of gene drive into a simulated field population, which brought about a crash of that entire population within a year, with no further human input. It is entirely self sustaining," said Hammond, who is also employed by the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, in Baltimore.

However, Hammond stressed that more comprehensive gene drive testing and environmental risk assessments were needed before larger field trials could take place. These could involve the release of non-sterile genetically modified mosquitoes to investigate whether they would mate with wild mosquitoes, and to what extent.

Such field trials could start within the next few years. Assuming they were successful, Hammond said he could imagine that "within 10 years we would have a limited release of gene-drive mosquitoes at our field testing site, probably in Burkina Faso".

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Genetic engineering test with mosquitoes 'may be game changer' in eliminating malaria

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Scientists have successfully wiped out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes by using a radical form of genetic engineering to render the females infertile - in the most advanced and largest ever test of use of the technology to fight the disease.

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Cephalopods: Masters of W.T.F? – Enough GIFs to Kill a Kraken | Deep Sea News

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Cephalopods: Masters of W.T.F? – Enough GIFs to Kill a Kraken | Deep Sea News

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With octopus, squid, & cuttlefish, reality is stranger than fiction. Shape-shifting, color-changing, or morphing into a Las Vegas billboard are nothing new for these real-life transformers.
Superheroes? Who gives a heck. I was too busy reading marine biology text books than to waste my time with the imaginary - and usually blatantly contradictory - special powers of comic book superheroes. In the real world, becoming invisible is an easy task for an octopus:
Maybe you are caught unaware. No problem, just blend into whatever looks good, like a strand of red algae:
Maybe your cloak of invisibility is not enough to hide from a predator, what to do? Get really angry, very large, and look tough enough to scare them off. Bluffing is 9/10 of survival (something I learned in that Turkish prison):
Becoming invisible (or looking really pissed off) requires three simple things: (1) you will need an excellent sense of vision to relay your local environment to your brain to modify your (2) layers of stacked pigment cells called melanocytes to expand or contract, varying the color & shading of your body to re-create the color of your surroundings, and (3) relaying the physical aspect of your environment to tiny muscle fibers that instantly change to texture of your skin to mimic your substrate. Boom, gone (but still in plain sight).
One layer of specialized cells, iridiophores, glam up the octopus with iridescent blues & greens. These aren't pigments, but cells that contain specialized components which take in ambient light and refract only the blue spectrum. What lame-ass superhero can even bend light like that? None. Moreover, this little Blue-Ringed Octopus has some nasty venom, so the pulsing blue rings warn a potential predators, but may also be irresistable to little kids poking around in tide pools. Oops.

Having the superpower to flash colors & textures and immediately change shape aren't just for fighting super-villains, but in this fast-paced world of evolution, cephalopods have come up with some excellent ways of just staying alive by a quick color change and expansion of muscles. Our friend the Mimic Octopus uses what's called a 'startle behavior' in an attempt to scare off a potential predator (in this case, the underwater cinematographer):
The Mimic Octopus brings up its game by using the ability to quickly change into other sea animals. Here it looks like the feathery striped fronds of the vemomous Lionfish's fins, and the black & white banding pattern of a highly-venomous sea snake, the Banded Sea Krait:

Octopus, squid, and cuttlefish all share highly muscularized tentacles, basically specially modified divisions of their boneless foot. Octopus have suckers with an impressive ability to grip, and an amazing level of fine dexterity to solve problems like this:
Squid tentacles may have a combination of suckers alone, or suckers with piercing hooks or sharp saw-toothed edges to grip and maim their prey, as seen in these Humboldt squid: Octopus move with jets of water squirted through their siphon, and the intensity and direction of the blasts accelerates and steers the animal as smoothly as a hoverboard.
Squid aren't that different from a personal spacecraft in those sci-fi comics, and these have a certain similarity to George Jetson's space car (but without George). With their siphon blasting jets of water and the fins along the side of the head undulating in waves that steer them, they can hover in place and instantaneously dart in any direction, and use their tentacles for streamlining, signaling, or attacking:
Now take this these concepts of color change, tentacles, and a personal hover-suit, and turn your little cephalopod body into some crazy disco predator. Using a neural network that coordinates the melanocytes and iridiophores into pulsating waves of light visually confuse - or possible mesmerize - prey enough to give you a split second to shoot your incredibly elastic predatory tentacles right in their face and pull them into your sharp killer beak. This is why the marine world is better than any comic book.
Ok, so maybe you want to be seen. You're a hot, sexy, ripe squid with gametes a-plenty and it's the season for love. But in the deep, dark ocean it's hard to find the right mate. No problem, some squid have specialized bioluminescent cells in your skin where a tiny internal chemical reaction emits light energy in little glowing spots. Your species may have a special pattern that identifies the right mates for you. Not interested in love? Those same light spots may attract prey that you can feast on until the moment is right for that special copulatory embrace:

So it's been a while since the squid love-fest, and now your life is taken up with caring for the kids. Sure, most squid just mate then dump a fertilized egg capsule on the ocean bottom and let those li'l squidlets hatch on their own, but not with Gontaus. She may not be the world's best mom, but unlike other squid, she carries her egg mass around to protect her little brood until the time they hatch. When they do, she pulsates the eggs gently kicking them out into the big dark world below, like shaking sand off a beach blanket. Once they are out, they are on their own and she has nothing more to do with them: Again, not the greatest mom, but better than most:

Next up, cephalopods have the highest cute factor of any invertebrate, more than flatworms, more than gastropods, and even more than those fancy-pants Peacock Spiders. I enter into evidence this contest between two little squid tucking themselves in for the night. Looking like they were designed by a Japanese toymaker, the Pyjama Squid (Sepioloidea lineolata) and the Tropical Bobtail Squid ( Sepiadarium kochi) will burow into your hearts:
Don't need any fancy bed because the sea floor is soft enough? Well then dig right in with a few blasts of water. No turn-down service required:

Most of all cephalopods just want to be left alone. When color changing, jetting away, burrowing into the sand, or impersonating more dangerous sea creature doesn't work, there's always just losing your shit and kicking ass:

I was one of those kids who loved nature and dreamed of being the globe-trotting host of a nature show, but as a grown-up I make a living by teaching undergraduate students at St. Mary's College of California, and conducting research at the California Academy of Sciences. Sharks, rays, & chimeras - both fossil and recent - as well as taxonomy & biogeography of deep sea fishes, are the focus of my research. These research projects & education programs have taken me to over 70 countries. I also coordinate expeditions to ocean habitats and tiki bars throughout the world through the red knit-capped rag-tag team of Lobos Marinos International Marine Science (& Cocktails).

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Cephalopods: Masters of W.T.F? - Enough GIFs to Kill a Kraken

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With octopus, squid, & cuttlefish, reality is stranger than fiction. Shape-shifting, color-changing, or morphing into a Las Vegas billboard are nothing new for these real-life transformers. Superheroes? Who gives a heck. I was too busy reading marine biology text books than to waste my time w

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Squib Dissection Calexico High School Jan 2019 - Lessons - Blendspace

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Squib Dissection Calexico High School Jan 2019 - Lessons - Blendspace