Double dip

Townes. You knew it was coming.

Night music...

...with the man in black.

Fish o' the Day - Sargassumfish

Next time you're on the beach and that brown, crunchy "seaweed" with the "berries" is awash in the surf, look closely. That's a brown algae known as Sargassum, the berries are actually gas-filled flotation bladders, and the clusters of algae support a all their own - crabs, shrimp, bryozoans, and one of the most unique fish you'll ever see. Or not.

You have to look closely, because the little frogfish (Family Antennariidae) known to fish guys as Histrio histrio has worked this camoflauge thing out pretty well. Even the name translate as "actor" a tribute to the fact that the sargassumfish is playing a role - in this case he's playing the part of a plant, as he waits for potential prey to come close enough for his strike. They reach lengths of about 8 inches, although half that is more common.

Here you go.

Helping me stay awake...

Andrew Bird, ticking nervously.

Too old...

...to be playing softball with the students. I'll feel it in the morning. Regardless, it'll have to be some quick hits tonight.

Killer whales are currently Orcinus orca - one species. That may not be the case for long. Analysis of mDNA from tissue samples taken 139 orcas from around the world points to at least three different species. This supports observations based on color patterns and feeding behavior. Seems there be two different species in Antarctic waters, and another that feeds on marine mammals in the North Pacific.

A new fossil primate from Spain - Pliopithecus canmatensis. It's an 11 million year old member of the primates known as the catarrhines. Catarrhines includes two extant superfamilies, the Cercopithicoidea, known as the Old World monkeys, and the Hominoidea - that's us, the other great apes, and the gibbons. The new fossil belongs to another superfamily, the Pliopithecoidea, that diverged prior to the two extant ones. The find indicates that the pliopithecoids may have been the first of the catarrhines to make the move from Africa to Eurasia.

Fish o' the Day - hagfish

OK, we're really stretching here. Sure, the whole "fish" thing is pretty nebulous. Bony fish - no doubt. Sharks and their kin - sure. Lampreys? Starting to get a little iffy there, but they're aquatic vertebrates with fins so we're probably safe calling them jawless fish. But hagfish? While traditionally they were grouped with the lampreys in the Class Agnatha, they've recently been kicked out of Club Vertebrata based on molecular analyses. But, for our purposes, they're fish.

We're also cheating a little in that hagfish are not a single "fish", but rather a group of some 60 species belonging to 5 genera. The best known are in the genus Myxine, but we know little enough about them that it's not terribly inappropriate to lump them all together.

Hagfish are considered by some to be among the most disgusting animals on the planet. That's a little harsh - I personally think they're pretty fascinating. But, if your primary claim to fame is producing prodigious amounts of slime and eating dead or dying fish from the inside out, you have to expect a little disrespect.

Their eel-like body, averaging perhaps 18 inches in length, is lined with glands that produce enormous amounts of a slimy secretion. Check it out...




They have the lowest blood pressure of any vertebrate (or, ex-vertebrate), and have accessory hearts that help push their blood along its way. They also have a unique ability to throw their body into a knot, an adaptation that they can use to scrape the slime off their body. This neat trick may also help them escape from predators, and perhaps allow them to squirm into and out of the bodies of fish on which they're feeding.

We're just beginning to get a handle on their reproductive biology, but we do know that they produce a surprisingly small number of eggs - ranging from just a couple to thirty or so. The eggs are equipped with hook-like structures and tend to stick together. There's even some indication of egg guarding behavior.

As for feeding, well, there's this...





Hagfish actually feed primarily on polychaete worms burrowing in the sediment in the deep, cold water that they frequent. Presented the opportunity, however, they won't turn down a meal in the form of a dead or dying fish on a long-line, or a sunken whale carcass.

Disgusting? Maybe so. But they're a delicacy in Korea. Of course.

Lots to do tonight

...so I probably won't be very active. I've been given the honor of speaking at our Honor's Program Banquet next week, and it's time to start thinking about that. Still trying to figure out an approach - hopefully it'll come together. The theme is a quote from a Robert Penn Warren poem...

"What is man, but his passion?"

Here's your bonus question for tonight. Who was he talking about?

Fish o' the Day - spot

Pretty unassuming name, right? My fish, spot. Actually, there was a time when spot was, in fact, MY fish. A significant portion of my dissertation work centered on Leiostomus xanthurus. So, welcome to another installment of Fish of my Life.

Spot are members of the Family Sciaenidae, the same family that includes the vastly more popular redfish and spotted seatrout. Spot are every bit as common, probably moreso, but they don't reach the sizes or provide the angling (or gustatory) experience supplied by their more celebrated cousins. Spot, which reach a length of 6 or 7 inches, are widely distributed in estuaries along the Atlantic and Gulf coast. They love to feed in soft sediments, where they move across the bottom, grazing like a herd of cattle. They're not feeding on marine plants, though. They're actually biting the bottom, taking mouthfuls of sediment which they manipulate in their buccopharyngeal apparatus (yeah, that's basically their mouths) to remove the small invertebrates that they rely on for food.

My Ph.D. work was completed in the lab of Dr. John Fleeger at LSU, a good man, a very good biologist, and a leading authority on the ecology of meiofauna, that unusual group of inverts that are too big to be "microscopic" and too small to be shrimp and crabs. Composed largely of nematodes and harpacticoid copepods, meiofauna are the primary food source for spot as they swarm into coastal estuaries. In one project, we investigated the manner in which spot could identify and utilize the patchy distributions that meiofauna are famous for. In fact, here's the paper. I spent the better part of a summer creating density treatments of meiofauna and video-taping feeding spot in laboratory aquaria. We found out that, indeed, they can localize their feeding in areas where holding greater concentrations of their tiny prey. Not only that, we discovered that the fish knew when they had slurped up a particularly rich patch of muddy substrate, manipulating it in their mouth like a relief pitcher with a fresh wad of chaw to remove all the good stuff. It's actually fairly sigificant in the way that it links the detrital and grazing food webs in estuarine systems.

Good ole days, but very tedious work. Still, an excellent model that I'm about to spring on some unsuspecting students of my own. Provided they're not reading this.

Thinking south

Moving into Subtropical Ecology preparation mode, with Donna the Buffalo. We'll come back from the road with the John Anderson version.

Thoreau on Earth Day

No, not that Thoreau. His distant relative, Mark Thoreau. He thinks that Henry would approve of the concept. He also thinks that many would be surprised that Henry, one of the original environmental activists, believed that a modern society could coexist with nature. As long as mankind realized that he was part of a larger whole. I think that's where we've gone off the track.

As we near the 40th Anniversary of the first Earth Day, it's probably time to recognize that some of us have gotten a little lazy in recent years. It's been a tough time. But the problems are bigger than ever, and the opposition more vocal and devious. Time to get off your ass and get busy.

That's a moray

A nice video to catch your eye...



...and call your attention to this story on moray eel genetic diversity and distribution across the Pacific Basin. Joshua Reece, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, has just completed a survey of the Family Muraenidae in which he collected two species of morays, the undulated and the yellow-edged, at locations spread across the Pacific. The goal was to identify genetic differences among populations that would indicate a disruption of gene flow. Reece's results, published in The Journal of Heredity, showed exactly the opposite - both species showed virtually no genetic differences across the wide Pacific. How come?

Reece, who collected a total of 289 eels over the course of the study, believes that the answer to the genetic homogeneity of morays across wide-flung reef communities lies in the dispersal of their larval stages. While adult morays are hunker-down type fish, often spending most of their lives on just a few square meters of reef, their pelagic larvae are extremely long-lived and can cover hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles. Most larval reef fish have a month or so in which to disperse; the leptocephalus larva of the moray may persist for many months, or even years.

Another question arises, however. If morays are such efficient dispersers, able to spread their genes across the Pacific, how do we explain their speciation into more than 150 different species, most of which occupy very similar niches. That may be Joshua's next project.

Fish o' the Day - opah

Last night, ocean sunfish. Tonight, for balance, moonfish. Well, moonfish is one of the local monikers for the opah, Lampris guttatus. The opah is one of two species in the Family Lampridae, and it's one of those fish that you just have to see to believe. They're brought up occasionally by deepsea fishermen, and more often by tuna longliners. Unfortunately, they're becoming increasingly popular in restaurants (never a good sign). The opah's greatest claim to fame in popular culture is that they were the main ingredient on an episode of Iron Chef America.

Opah are fish of the open ocean, typically at depth. They can reach lengths of five feet, and can weigh 70-80 pounds. Opah feed on a variety of foods including euphausids and squid, and are themselves occasionally taken by sharks. Beyond that, we just don't know much about them.

Other than the fact that they're just plain cool.

And, from the other side of the country...

...a very different story about Puma concolor. The endangered Florida panther is represented by about 100 individuals in extreme south Florida. The highest densities of panthers are in the area of the Big Cypress National Preserve on the northwestern edge of the Everglades, and that's where far too many panthers die on roadways. Last year, 17 of the big cats fell prey to motorists. Other fatalities brought the total number of deaths to 24. In a way, there's good news embedded in there somewhere - the numbers are up from the rock bottom numbers of a couple of decades ago. There's also good genetic news, in that the influx of genes provided by a handful of female cougars introduced from a population in Texas is helping address the genetic disorders that had resulted from years of inbreeding. Still, the highways deaths are slowing an already torturous recovery.

The state of Florida is trying to help by installing special detectors along a stretch of highway in the Big Cypress that has seen too many deaths in recent years. The devices, known as Roadside Animal Detection Systems (RADS), employ a variety of technologies to detect large animals moving toward roadways. When movement is detected, the RADS set off a a network of flashing lights to warn drivers to slow down and be on the lookout.

There's serious debate about whether Florida panthers represent a distinct subspecies (P. concolor coryi) or just a regional population of the cougar. Current evidence is indicating that the various subspecies of P. concolor in North America may, in fact, all be the same animal. This, of course, encourages vocal idiots (like poster "outsidethebox" in the comments at the end of the article) to assume that the loss of an animal like the Florida panther is inconsequential - that they're somehow easily replaced. But the key is, while species epithets may be somewhat contrived, biodiversity is real. At all levels. Hard for me to understand how anyone could believe that an animal like the Florida panther doesn't need to be saved. To paraphrase, don't ask why they're ringing that bell. It's for you, bud.

My Subtropical Ecology class and I will be headed south to land of the Florida panther later this year. We like to pretend we saw one in the Fakahatchee Strand late one night a few years ago. Hard to say for certain - just an eyeshine and a big animal bounding across a back road. Still a special moment (right, Daneen?). We need to go to the wall for these guys. Hopefully this new technology will save a few.

Sea snakes

This is intriguing. Sea snakes are descended from venomous land-dwellers that reentered the oceans some 5 million years ago. While the terrestrial descendant of those snakes show a wide range of color patterns, sea snakes are pretty consistently banded. Why?

That's the question investigated by a group from the University of Sydney published recently in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers felt that sea snakes provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the evolutionary pressures of life in the sea as it compares to a terrestrial existence. We know that selection gave sea snakes a paddle-like tail and large lungs, but what about those bands?

Looks like it might be related to algal fouling. Fouling has been reported in some sea snakes, and has serious impacts on hydrodynamics when it occurs. To examine the potential effect of coloration on fouling, the research team utilized a population that exhibits exhibits considerable variation, with individuals ranging from a uniform black to a distinctive banding pattern. Over a four year period, the research team found that black individuals sported significantly more algae than the banded individuals. To ensure that it was actually coloration that was driving the difference, the team went the extra mile. They suspended plastic models of snakes in three different color morphs, black, while, and black/white, and followed the fouling process. Sure enough, the black models supported the highest algal density, with black-and-white, and white models trailing behind. This is apparently related to the fact that some algal spores actually settle out preferentially on darker substrates.

Of course, the question arises. Why are there black sea snakes? Why aren't they all white? The answer, no doubt, lies in that most universal of all evolutionary phenomena - trade-offs. No matter how many factors you've thought of, there's always one you haven't.

Cougars or deer?

News item from the West. Deer herds in western states have declined a little in recent years. Down by half in the last 20 years in Nevada. The conflict is predictable. Wildlife biologists say it's because of habitat loss. Hunting groups say it's because of increasing numbers of predators like coyotoes and cougars. Reading between the lines, it sounds like its more about politics than it is wildlife. Be willing to bet you that biodiversity loses.

Fish o' the Day - ocean sunfish

May I introduce to you the world's heaviest bony fish. The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, is also one of the strangest-looking of our finny friends. It looks for all the world like somebody caught a monstrous fish and discarded the head -which promptly swam off. Adult molas routinely reach about six feet in length and tip the scales at about a ton. That's a lot of mass in a relatively short length, but that's explained by the fact that the fish is essentially a solid block of tissue. The molas are members of the same order as the pufferfish and porcupinefish, the Tetraodontiformes. There are even some suggestions that they produce toxins similar to those for which the puffers are known.

Ocean sunfish are cosmopolitan in tropical and temperate oceans. Although there is a perception that they spend all their time basking at the surface, they're actually more likely to be found in deeper waters. Some researchers believe that, when they are seen basking, they're accumulating heat energy for their dives into deeper water. Sunfish feed primarily on jellyfish and other cnidarians, and must consume large quantities to support their bulk.

The ocean sunfish has a couple of other superlatives among the fish. They have the smallest number of vertebra of any bony fish, and their spinal cord of even a large individual is only inches long. Also, the female Mola produces the largest number of eggs of any known vertebrate, in the neighborhood of 300 million. Those eggs hatch out and develop into a tiny, spined fry.

Sunfish seem to be doing OK, although there is a tremendous by-catch associated with swordfish fisheries. They're not generally considered edible, although some Asian cultures (of course) consider them a delicacy.

Here's a nice dive video of a Mola with a group of false moorish idols engaged in what appears to be cleaning activity.

Stuff I didn't know...

...of which there's a lot. But tonight I was working on a presentation for my Con Bio group, this one is about overexploitation, and ran across this. Kamehameha the Great, who conquered the Hawaiian Islands and established the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1810, wore a great cloak which became emblematic of the power of the Hawaiian throne. This cloak, passed on for generations, used the bright yellow flowers of the Hawaiian mamo, Drepanis pacificia, which was an endemic member of the honeycreeper family.

"Was" is the operative word there. Seems the great cloak was passed on through a series of eight rulers and ultimately contained the feathers of 80,000 mamos. They're gone now. Moral of the story - we've been wasting the earth's biodiversity for a long time, and it's not a peculiarly western trait. Although, I'll admit we're pretty good at it.

Bonelli's eagle

There are about 60 species of eagles worldwide, belonging to almost two dozen genera. Of those, only two species are found in North America, the sea eagle that is our national emblem and the golden eagle of the American West. Most of the rest are native to Africa and Eurasia, and many nations there have also adopted eagles as a symbol of their nation's strength.

A new study appearing in the journal Isis takes an in-depth look at one European species. Bonelli's eagle, Aquila fasciata, a species native to the Mediterranean region. Although considered an endangered species by some, the IUCN does not consider that they meet the criteria to be listed as "vulnerable."

In the Ibis study, researchers tracked 18 Bonelli's eagles in three different regions around the Mediterranean with the goal establishing the size of and examining spatial use patterns. Of particular interest were potential differences in sex-related differences in territorial behaviour. The findings suggest that, like many eagles, Bonelli's tends a larger home territory outside the breeding season, although nesting areas remain important year-round as the eagles use them as sites to rest and recuperate. There are important conservation implications, as the study suggests that nesting areas are important, even if there aren't eagles nesting there.