Cruising through a few of the recent images uploaded by Artour_a at Flickr and I ran into this beautiful treehopper. I remember some real oddities when I was in Honduras, but this one is a real winner!
Artour_a has quite a few tropical tree hopper images on his site in a great set called...hmmm. what was it called? Oh, yes - Treehoppers:
There is so much I could say about Karen's latest post, but I will defer to her and Mr. Prosek. Here are a few quotes I like:
"I began to understand that species were less static than the fathers of modern taxonomy—those like Carl Linnaeus—once believed. That nature was static and classifiable was an idea perpetuated by the natural history museum (repository for dead nature), the zoo (repository for living nature), and the book (repository for thoughts and images related to nature). These mediums were all distillations of nature, what individuals of authority deemed an appropriate cross section to present to the public. None had adequately represented Nature—at once chaotic, multifarious, and interconnected."Needless to say I will be putting in an order. While I am at it, I may just buy a few of his other beautiful books for my son and I to read!
"Naming gives us the illusion that nature is fixed, but it is as fluid as the language used to describe it."
"I was conflicted—I loved the names that had first led me to recognize the existence of diversity (golden trout, Oncorhynchus aguabonita; blueback
trout, Salvelinus oquassa), but as I learned more I wanted to throw away the names, step beyond those constraints, in order to preserve a sense of wonder that I had felt from an early age."
A carnival on taxonomy and biodiversity! Up at A DC Birding Blog, complete with ostracods (or is that ostracodes?), snails, birds and much more!
OK, a slight digression on the theme today. We are going to talk about a paper involving the endemic flora of Trinidad and Tobago, but we won't discuss plants. Instead, we'll talk about open access to information. In a paper just out in the conservation journal Oryx, Van Den Eynden and colleagues discuss how they evaluated plant endemism, conservation status and reserve effectiveness utilizing only freely available online resources from the internet and local Herbaria. There were several conclusions drawn about plant conservation, but here is a tidbit about how free access to information helped in assessing conservation status.
"Research institutes that use information technology to catalogue and distribute information online promote the advancement of knowledge at a global scale. Using such free-access online resources, and advice offered freely by taxonomy experts, a review of the endemic vascular plant species of Trinidad and Tobago and an assessment of their conservation status was carried out in a relatively short time and without significant cost. This in turn has been made freely available online (Van den Eynden, 2006). Such rapid evaluation of conservation status cannot replace the need for in depth field-based monitoring and assessment but it provides valuable baseline information for the identification and targeting of specific conservation and research needs. The methods used can be applied by most countries for initial assessments of plant extinction risks. Lack of resources or research data is no longer an argument not to do so."Free information, it werks bitchez.
Mr. Slybird has the latest and greatest Linneaus' Legacy carnival up at Biological Ramblings. It is an awesome blog carnival highlighting taxonomy, systematics, and biodiversity posts. They are looking for hosts for next month and beyond. Sign up and be a part of history in the making!
Hat tip to Bug Girl who pointed out a press release on Science Daily describing a bee inventory project by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History.
"Scientists have discovered that there are more bee species than previously thought. In the first global accounting of bee species in over a hundred years, John S. Ascher, a research scientist in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, compiled online species pages and distribution maps for more than 19,200 described bee species, showcasing the diversity of these essential pollinators. This new species inventory documents 2,000 more described, valid species than estimated by Charles Michener in the first edition of his definitive The Bees of the World published eight years ago."Click the link above to read more! Just another reason why inverts rule and verts drool. Photo from Cid*'s Flickr Photostream.
While the deep-sea may be the final frontier for marine biologists, caves are one of the least studied environments on land. Some caves can extend dozens of miles below the ground in sinuous networks, all but cut off from the grassy hills and tree-lined horizons above. Its not an easy environment to access and many explorers have perished attempting to map these subterranean labyrinths. Yet, recent investigations have found an astonishing community of invertebrates associated with caves, existing nowhere else. Many of these species are insects and spiders, adapted to the dark conditions, muggy conditions. Nearly every new cave expedition turns up species never before seen.
How do these animals exist down there? What is their source of food? It turns out that nestled in the Blue Mountains of Australia at the 350 million year old Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve, the base of the invertebrate community consists of decaying leaf litter. Eucalyptus trees, native to the area, historically contributed the most to the leaf litter pool. Over the years, introduced trees have naturalized around the cave opening. Sycamore from Europe was brought in to stabilize steep, rocky slopes and Radiata Pine from North America was provided for the timber industry. Hills and colleagues from the University of Technology Sydney compared leaf litter decomposition rates and invertebrate diversity between the 3 leaf litter pools in "twilight" areas (i.e. near cave openings) and "dark" areas deeper in the cave.
The introduced Sycamore leaves decomposed much faster than the radiata pine needles and native eucalyptus leaves. This suggests that Sycamore leaves release more carbon and nutrients into the cave ecosystem, potentially supporting a more abundant and diverse invertebrate community. Interestingly, there was no difference in leaf mass loss between twilight and dark leaf litter. Proximity to above-ground features like light, rain and wind appear not to affect leaf litter decomposition.
Before I discuss the trends for invertebrates there, I want you to sit back in your chair, take a deep breathe and relax. Close your eyes and envision a cave. Its dark, moist, there is only one opening. All that remains of it is a singularity of daylight. For hundreds or thousands of years this cave has been fed organic matter from the surrounding vegetation. Trees such as Eucalyptus abound in the limestone hills, shedding off their leaves which make their way by the cave opening eventually being blown in by a gust of wind. This occurs daily for millennia. Insects and arachnids feast on the leaves as well as the fungi and bacteria associated with the leaf matter. Over time one might suspect that the animals become adapted to the leaf litter type in some way.
Fast forward to the last 100 years and globalism has introduced new organisms to every corner of the planet at an unprecedented pace, including Sycamore and Radiata Pine to eastern Australia. Are the invertebrate communities more diverse and abundant on the native vegetation that is may have adapted to?
As you can see from the above figures, abundance and species richness are much greater for the introduced european Sycamore than either the pine or Eucalyptus, especially nearer the cave opening. The authors don't really nail the answer with their experiment, but narrow it down to attributes of Sycamore that favor colonization by invertebrates over Pine and Eucalyptus. For instance, Sycamore has a higher specific leaf area (SLA) than both Pine and Eucalyptus. A low SLA is associated with long-lived leaves containing many structural and defensive compounds. These trees invest heavily to guard against plant-eaters whereas the broad-leafed Sycamore does not invest against herbivory, so leaves break down quickly. This faster nutrient release may be part of the reason sycamore leaves have a more abundant and diverse community.
So what would happen if Sycamore were to completely supplant Eucalyptus? It is a higher nutrient leaf and releases carbon faster (i.e. breaks down faster), so it should be better for the spineless society down under, right? One problem is that Sycamore is a deciduous tree. This means nutrient pulses to the caves would occur on a seasonal basis. Since its leaves break down so quickly, this pulse would be short lived compared to the structurally-strengthened Pine and Eucalyptus, both of which keeps their leaves year-round. Being below-ground, caves are protected from the variability of the seasons and are relatively stable environments in terms of climate. The invertebrate community there needs a more constant or stable supply of leaf litter to be sustained. The authors propose
"The short-term influx of energy provided by sycamore litter could be detrimental to subterranean invertebrate diversity in the long term. We would expect to see invertebrate species predisposed to utilizing sycamore derived energy dominating subterranean invertebrate communities and perhaps out-competing other invertebrate species, thereby reducing invertebrate diversity."Interesting food for thought: nutrient pulses reduce diversity over time. On the other hand, if the authors are talking about partial species replacement, I would also expect to see increase in diversity pooled over the whole year. If this is only a seasonal phenomenon, complete species replacement would be unlikely given that established invertebrates that can utilize multiple plant sources over the year will persist over the long-term. It would certainly be an idea worth funding, especially from the angle that caves may be sheltered from the immediate effects of climate change. A nice replicated mesocosm study within the caves and near the entrances. 'X' amount of replicates sampled throughout the year at various time points to gauge the effect of seasonal nutrient pulses. How about adding various mixtures of different quality leaves to test the hypothesis that maximum food quality results in highest species richness.
WTF!!11! OMG11!!!eleven!! WTF!!!!111!!!!11! I DON'T THINK SO!?!?!?!!!??!one!!!!!!111!1!!!
Well, I don't have any offhand evidence for it, but I seriously doubt it. Especially in the ocean where vertebrates IMHO probably aren't the majority in ... oh I don't know... diversitybiomassabundanceandeverythingelse. CNN reports this quote paraphrasing the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in an article today titled "Humans Blamed for Sharp Drop in Wildlife" (duh!).
The Living Planet Index measured 4,000 populations of 1,477 vertebrate species, which the WWF says is a good indicator of overall biodiversity trends.OK, I understand its hard to get cuddly dollars from donors out of a jelly like you can a polar bear, but I really doubt vert "biodiversity trends", whatever that means, are indicative of the Living Planet. I don't have the time or patience to delve into the literature for this, so lets use a bit of the ole common sense.
Those containing backbones account for roughly 5% of animal diversity (by generous estimates), while those without said characteristic are embodied in THE OTHER 95% (ahem, *clears throat*). Of course the purpose of an indicator taxon in ecology is to be able to characterize and extrapolate the dynamics of a given genus or family to the whole community level. For instance, in agricultural landscapes one might use use carabid beetles to extrapolate to the rest of the insect community. This might be founded on an earlier study saying that carabid beetles made of 87% of the insect community. Therefore one may suppose that it is easier and cheaper to use beetles in the family Carabidae as an indicator for the community. Then you can perform experiments using this taxon to test ecological hypotheses and implement a monitoring program using carabids to make sure a protected parcel of land is be preserved, etc. etc. The key point is that for an indicator taxon to be useful it must be shown it represents the community or excompasses its diversity well enough.
Microcosmos: Discovering the World Through Microscopic Images from 20 X to Over 22 Million X Magnification. This postcard sized book is a collection of unbelievable microscopic photography from the archives of The Science Photo Library assembled by Brandon Broll. I was in awe of the visuals and excruciating detail of the images. Below is an example page from the amazon webpage.
The book is organized into 6 sections: Micro-Organisms, Botany, The Human Body, Zoology, Minerals and Technology. Each section takes you through a visually stunning micro-world. There are 205 full page Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images and the magnification and description accompanies each of the images. Every image has a unique feature that will leave the reader searching for more answers.
A great coffee table addition or a thumb-through for inspiration, Microcosmos will undoubtedly leave you in amazement at the little world that surrounds us. At less than $20 on amazon I highly recommend this for your library (looks great next to Reef)!
2008 is the year to LIVBLUE: "Live like you love the ocean." That is why are ocean bloggers. The ocean holds a special place in all of our souls. A place where life came about, evolved and was cradled. A historical refuge from extinction. A place where bountiful resources nurtured early civilizations. A superhighway and living market for modern civilizations. Yet a place where we can rest our weary bodies, contemplate and find inspiration.
But the ocean is heaving and sighing with the weight we have put on its back. Its bounty is growing scarcer, its resources diminishing. Once a refuge, now plastic and debris, oil spills, toxic chemicals and metals, munitions dumping, and other ailments have made the watery milieu an obstacle course for its inhabitants and there are no do-overs in this game. This may not be news to most of us. As ocean bloggers, we become accustomed to catastrophe, often the harbinger of bad news.
There is another route we can take. We can become messengers for sustainability, accountability and reformation. Humans have a close connection to the water. We are evolved from it. We are born into it. We bath in it, letting it embrace us as we cleanse ourselves. We drink it and made up of it. Not all humans will share in the full enthusiasm and passion of an ocean blogger, but they are interested in the ocean, even if never having been there. They eat from its cornucopia. They buy products that were shipped across the seas on ocean liners. They feel a pain and sense of loss when shown oil-covered seagulls and otters, or sea turtles and sharks wrapped up in thin fishing wire. I have faith in people that they generally want to do whats right.
I am calling upon all ocean bloggers to use the power of the proverbial pen in 2008 to dedicate their writing not to solving these issues. Politicians and policy-makers do read us. Everyday people read us. Our pen is better suited to educating people on not what the problems, but why they exist, who is responsible, what can be done at a local level and how to sustain a lasting commitment to the health and sustainability of our oceans and its resources.
A few weeks ago I organized and gave a session on Real Time Blogging in the Marine Sciences at the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference with my ocean blogging colleagues Peter Etnoyer from Deep Sea News, Jason Robertshaw from Cephalopodcast, Rick MacPherson from Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets and Karen James from The Beagle Project. It was a learnign experience for myself and I think its safe to say for everyone involved, be it the co-moderators and the audience.
Real time blogging to me is the art of bringing the excitement of discovery and the process of being a discoverer to the front door of the average citizen. It captures the immediacy of the moment in all of its unedited glory. There was a lot discussion generated, which would have gone on if it weren't for the 70 minute time limit. Rick has a great analysis of our session, so I won't belabor the point here. Jason video-taped the session and has it archived here for your viewing pleasure. Additional coverage includes photos from myself (here and here too), swag from Rick, commentary and analysis from Peter and Karen as well. I came away from the whole conference with a renewed interest in blogging as a tool for public discourse and now feel more determined than ever to blog, one of several reasons I have joined the crew at Deep Sea News.
But this Carnival of the Blue is not about me, its about ocean blogging. I feel, in the water, that 2008 is going to be a big year for the Blue. It is the International Year of the Reef. Conversation has already been going on reef conservation in anticipation of this event. In 2008, I expect ocean blogging to increase, more bloggers, more discussion, more solutions. Last month, Mr. Byrnes gave us an excellent entry into this year with Carnival of the Blue #8. The Carnival of the Blue, started by Mark Powell at Blogfish, is showing steady growth. I hope it continues and that there will be more submissions from new ocean blogs and other blogs that are talking about ocean related issues. This month we have a mix of both.
Before you continue reading, head over to Cephalopodcast and start playing the latest internet radio program offered by Jason Robertshaw. Among the many pearls of marine news Jason finds, this episode also features an interview Mark Powell where they discuss the Carnival of the Blue and ocean blogging. His soothing radio voice will make a wonderful narrative while you peruse this carnivals offering.
Corey at 10,000 Birds tells us of his discoveries of the maritime avifauna on the Santa Cruz island, part of the California's Channel Islands. In particular the Island Scrub Jay, a close relative of my favorite bird from my Monterey days, the Western Scrub Jay. Special bonus: a pod of dolphins on the boatride!
A common theme ocean is that of "shifting baselines". A term coined by marine biologist Jeremy Jackson to refer to the idea that each generation has different view of what the baseline is because they only remember what the world was like when they were growing up. Jennifer Jacquet at the Shifting Baselines blog illustrates this point well with a discussion of baselines shifting as evidenced through ship captain's logbooks. Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Insection tells us that the next hot fishery is Hagfish. Which makes me wonder, will fish sticks soon be fried hagfish slimeballs? As Jennifer would say, "... just another shifting baseline..."
Public perception is important to individuals and corporations. Some ways of perceived can be clever while other irritating at best. Rick at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice and Sunsets explains the history behind the mermaid in the Starbucks logo and discusses what is the marine world equivalent of the cute and cuddly mascot, Woodsy Owl. Additionally, Miriam at The Oysters Garter wonders why Oceana is trying to spread its conservation message by spam.
Emmett Duffy at The Natural Patriot offers us beautifully narrated journal entry from his latest research excursion to Jamaica where he was "filled with a powerful sense of calm and gratitude and harmony". So touched was he by his jamaican experience he named this new species of social shrimp Synalpheus irie, irie being rastafarian for "high emotions and peaceful vibrations"."This 286-page work contains 6,793 valid species and subspecies, 1,271 genera and subgenera, 93 families and 38 superfamilies, making it the most comprehensive to date. And with references as recent as January 2008, it is also the most up-to-date."That is it for this edition of the Carnival of the Blue, Kate Wing will be hosting #10 in March. Remember to live like you love the ocean.
Did you know the Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) has an Invertebrate Diversity Initiative? Here is what they say about the spineless:
CABS is officially a Friend of the Invertebrates here at TO95.Invertebrate Diversity InitiativeMore than 95 percent of the Earth's animal species are invertebrates (animals without backbones). They can be found in all habitats of the planet, from polar regions to rainforests to the greatest depths of the oceans. The number of invertebrate species living today is estimated to be between 3 and 15 million. By comparison, there are only about 47,000 species of vertebrates.
While most invertebrates are smaller than the smallest of vertebrates, the ecological services invertebrates provide are immeasurable, and life as we know it would cease to exist without them. Yet despite the ubiquity and unparalleled role invertebrates play in our planet's ecosystems they receive little or no attention from general public or conservation authorities.
To help remedy this situation, CABS launched the Invertebrate Diversity Initiative (IDI) in 2002, a program designed to promote invertebrates in conservation practices, both as indicators of the ecosystem health and subject of conservation actions.
(emphasis my own)
An application process is currently open (various deadlines, starting Jan 15, 2008) for a new Erasmus Mundus course in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. More information can be found on the website: http://embc.marbef.org . Applications are open for both European and non-European students. The Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (EMBC) is offered by a University consortium consisting of 6 partners. The study programme is divided in 3 thematic modules : (1) Understanding the structure and function of marine biodiversity (2) Toolbox for investigating marine biodiversity (3) Conservation and Restoration of marine biodiversity.
"The Biological Species Concept advocates a chauvinistic perception of diversity, one obviously in discord with known, natural, biological systems. Given that all asexual species are disregarded and that allopatric lineages, regardless of their sexual tendencies, are only considered subspecies, biodiversity recognized under this concept is severely abridged."
- Wiley, E. O., & R. L. Mayden. 2000. A defense of the evolutionary species concept, Pages 198-208 in Q. D. Wheeler, and R. Meier, eds. Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory: A Debate. New York, Colombia University Press.
The GBIF Node at the Finnish Museum of Natural History seeks a biologist with interest in taxonomy and informatics for a 3-year research project. The purpose of the project is to build an e-infrastructure for resolving scientific names of organisms to facilitate biodiversity data use and data sharing in the Nordic region and beyond. Initial appointment will be up to 24 months using available NordForsk funding. Further continuation is pending on progress and success in acquiring the necessary funding.
The work requires designing and setting up a service on Internet that will issue globally unique identifiers for scientific names and the underlying taxonomic concepts based on the Life Sciences Identifier (LSID) specification, which has been standardized by the Biodiversity Informatics Standards organization TDWG and is recommended by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The incumbent will work in a team consisting of a computer scientist and contributors in Nordic countries. Details of the project are described in http://www.gbif.fi/projects/lsid/LSID_project-v4.html.
Preferred qualifications
* Interest in taxonomy and understanding of how scientific nomenclature works
* Awareness of international developments in biodiversity informatics such as TDWG, GBIF, Species 2000, etc.
* General interest in Internet and good computer skills as user
* Good communication skills, including good command of English and preferably knowledge of a Scandinavian language
* M.Sc level in education.
Terms and conditions
Employed as Ph.D. Student at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, P. Rautatiekatu 13. Other location at another Nordic GBIF Node, or working remotely, is possible and can be negotiated.
The salary for a doctoral student is based on level 2 of the demands level chart for teaching and research personnel. With the salary component based on personal work performance the overall salary range is 1678-2450 euros per month.
How to apply
Send letter of application, CV and contact details of one or more referees Hannu Saarenmaa, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 17 (P.Rautatiekatu 13), FI-00014 University of Helsinki. Applications are not returned. The application deadline is Monday, 14 January 2008 at 15.45.
For more information please contact Hannu Saarenmaa, +358 (0) 9 191 28688, hannu.saarenmaa::at::helsinki::dot::fi.
In preparation for my comprehensive examination next week and because its International Dissertation Writing Month, I will be posting my thesis proposal as I madly try to finish it all in time over the next few days. Feel free to question, correct, nitpick, criticize (constructively, I'm in a fragile state right now!), comment, praise me and make suggestions for improvement. And yes, I'm freakin' out!!!!
Christopher at the Catalogue of Organisms has outdone himself and created a fantastic new blog carnival devoted to the study of biodiversity, with taxonomy and systematics at its core. He hopes to keep it alive and is looking for submissions and hsots. Yours truly will be hosting in February. This is great idea that fills a niche for the important yet often overlooked science of biodiversity. Here is an excerpt from Linnaeus' Legacy #1, and head over there today to get a fresh look at the blogosphere's best writing in biodiversity, taxonomy and systematics.
Next year also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the official beginning of zoological nomenclature, with the publication of the 10th edition of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae (the botanists were a bit quicker off the mark, and they trace things back to Linnaeus' Species Plantarum of 1753). It therefore brings me great pleasure to unveil the first installment of Linnaeus' Legacy. Hopefully this will be a monthly review of recent posts on the subject of biodiversity past and present, the study of said biodiversity and the questions of how to understand, describe and communicate about it. Posts will be accepted on all aspects of taxonomy and systematics, from the esoteric (species concepts, classificatory principles) to the pragmatic (new discoveries in the world of systematics) to the didactic (communicating about taxonomy). Since he established the practice of binomial nomenclature (originally intended to be simply a short stand-in for much longer, more official-sounding names), this is indeed Carl Linnaeus' legacy, though I'm not certain he'd appreciate everything we're doing with it.
For your information, there might be a link to a pdf of the copyrighted manual to widely used community ecology analysis program (click on picture below to download pdf). It might only be up for a short while, so you should probably download it if you use or plan on using Primer, or interested in community ecology analysis, relatively soon. It also might be around 17mb if such a document were to exist on the internet in violation of copyright. Of course I would never post anything on the internet that would break copyright law, open access to information is evil and undermines peer review yadda yadda....
In November 2003, while an undergrad at University of California at Davis I was asked by my 2 of my Geology professors if I wanted to help them out on an expedition to hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise. They knew of my interest in vents because they were teaching a 1 credit seminar on Hydrothermal Vents that I was participating in. My undergraduate major in Evolution and Ecology though and was planning on double majoring in Geology. It never happened though, mostly because I didn't want to stay an extra semester and take the two classes I needed to finish the major (coincidentally the same classes I would have needed to get a minor too - Paleoclimatology and Mineralogy).
This expedition was headed by the Field Museum of Chicago as more or less a collecting expedition and other parties with funding came along to share the cruise time. We used the famous Alvin submersible and sailed aboard the R/V Atlantis. Our role as the "geology contingent" was to oversee the night operations which included mapping the seafloor and flying TowCam, the towed camera system the we basically keep from crashing too may times into the seafloor or a cliff or something. It takes a photo every 30 seconds and also has equiptment to measure the alitude off the seafloor, distance of something in front it, particle scatter in the water column, conductivity and temperature. Except for the photographs, all this information is relayed up the cable to the control room where someone has to constantly have their hand on the controls to adjust the feed of the cable, keeping the camera at about 3-5 meters off the bottom. Not an easy task, but needlessness to say the graduate student and undergrad (myself) never crashed while the 2 professors who have done this for years... lets just say the close-ups were awesome!
Being that this was mainly a biology cruise was the real reason I was asked to go. I'm not really a geologist, just a biologist with a good deal of geological training. Being the least senior out of just about everybody on board I was affectionately referred to one French participant (whom I now work with on various projects) as the "ship's bitch". I was in charge of making a "best of" video for the expedition to show off to the Museum's patrons. Basically pulling out highlights and cool video from each dive. I also found my passion was sorting through rocks, sediment, snot, you name it and finding critters. I seemed to be very good at it as the Chief P.I. and other biologists seemed pretty please with my findings! Sorting is still something I take great pleasure in. I get all giggly when a box full of crap comes up from the seafloor, filled with various worms, gastropods, amphipods... its the "what new thing might I find if I keep looking?" that keeps my interests peaked. Other duties were as requested by whomever wanted help (like bleeding the giant tubeworm Riftia pachyptila). I reveled in it all!
Our nights were filled with work, but the daytime was spent waiting for Alvin to return from the bottom. We often peered overboard trying to spot marine life. Often floating debris from islands or continents far away would pass beside the ship with several colorful fish hidden underneath seeking its protection. One day a coconut floated by. I don't know whose brilliant idea it was, but one of the biologists netted it for fun I suppose. As it turned out this coconut was full of wonderful surprises!
"I have counted more than 10,000 individual snails and sieved through more than 200 kilograms of mud for my dissertation."
Lepetodrilus schrolli-37,666 (321.67g)
Olgasolarus tollmanni-7,114 (229.88g)
Symmetromphalus sp. nov.-713 (14.08g)
Bathyacmaea sp. nov.-424 (1.36g)
Pseudorimula marianae-72 (0.3g)
Desbruyeresia cancellata-70 (1.12g)
Shinkailepas sp. nov.-43 (0.98g)
Eosipho desbruyeresi-11 (273.57g)
Provanna buccinoides-6 (0.75g)
Bruciella globulus-6 (0.01g)
Phymorhynchus sp.-4 (0.16g)
Lurifax sp.-4 (<0.01g)
Pachydermia sculpta-3 (<0.01g)
Venstia tricarinata-3 (<0.01g)
Planordibella depressa-2 (<0.01g)
Leptogyra inflata-1 (0.01g)
Laeviphitus sp.-1 (<0.01g)
TOTAL # - 46,143 (843.89g)
Nothing makes me more happier than collecting specimens. I feel as if I am transported back to the Victorian era and am on a grand expedition to uncover the mysteries of the deep and testing for the first time the Azoic Theory of the ocean.
Except that my expedition only lasts for 4 weeks, not 4 years, and my purpose is not prove life exists in great depths at great extremes but to study the life we expect to find at these places. One such place is the East-Lau Spreading Center between Fiji and The Kingdom of Tonga. Here I am studying, as part of my graduate work, the ecology of communities structured by three habitat-forming molluscs, the mussel Bathymodiolus brevior and the snails Alviniconcha hessleri and Ifremeria nautilei. These 3 species are large chemoautotrophic species and serve as the foundation for an intricate network of associated fauna living within the aggregations of each mollusc. I am also describing, with other colleagues, species of anemone, zoanthid and shrimp from there (6, 1, 1 species, respectively).
The picture above shows my haul from the 2006 (sept.) field season. My last field, it is time for me to write it up, turn it in and move on. I don't know how many specimens I've collected in total. But from all the quantitative collections I've made in 2005 and 2006 I have found ~55 species associated with the 3 habitat-forming communities and have counted over 50,000 individuals of this associated fauna so far weighing in at over 1,948 grams. There are still a few taxonomic details I am working out with a Polynoid Polychaete genus, so I'll let you know the final word after that is sorted out along with the counts of the habitat-forming fauna.
As a final caveat, yes all the organisms I have identified are INVERTS! Surprised? I didn't think so... We did collect some zoarcid fish that I will analyze the gut contents of, but none were caught in my quantitative collections.
