Marmorkrebs

Call for papers: 19th Freshwater Crayfish Symposium

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The 19^th International Symposium on Freshwater Crayfish (IAA19) is now accepting registrations and presentation abstracts. The meeting will be held in Innsbruck, Austria, at the University of Innsbruck from 26-31 August 2012.

Please note that discounted meeting registration fees (€30) are only for active members of the International Association of Astacology (IAA). So if you’re not a member, or have not renewed your membership, now’s the time to pay up!

Go to the meeting website at: http://www.uibk.ac.at/ecology/events/iaa19/index.html.en

The eight most popular crayfish

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Those keeping crayfish as pets might be interested in Chris Lukhaup’s round-up, Freshwater Aquarium Crayfish.

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Motto

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Anyone need a new desktop wallpaper?

2011 was not the best year ever for Marmorkrebs research

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

If last year could be seen as a breakout year for Marmorkrebs research, this one might be counted as a correction.

As anyone who’s studied statistics should know, an extraordinary event is more likely to be followed by a rather more ordinary one. I am hoping this is just a temporary dip for Marmorkrebs research, and that in 2012, the upward trend will resume. And on a personal note, I look forward to carrying out the research funded by #SciFund in 2012!

In the larger crustacean realm, probably one of the most noteworthy news stories of the year was the publication of the first crustacean genome. But I keep wondering every time I hear about the advances of high throughput sequencing and how cheap and easy it’s getting... why don’t I have a crayfish genome yet? Grumble grumble grumble.

New Freshwater Crayfish

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

I got the hardcopy of the newest issue of Freshwater Crayfish last week. It’s the first part of volume 18. The production values are good, with sharp figure reproductions and gloss paper. There are some colour figures, too!

As I mentioned previously, the society International Association of Astacology really wants to have a push to get the journal published much more regularly. It used to be published only in alternate years. The society hopes that this will allow Freshwater Crayfish to be indexed in services like ISI Web of Science, which would mean that the journal could get an official Impact Factor.

Manuscripts for Freshwater Crayfish are now being accepted continually. The turnaround time from submission to publication should be on the order of months, rather than years. Submissions can uploaded to: http://iz.carnegiemnh.org/FCEditor/

Disclosure: I have an article in this issue, though not on Marmorkrebs.

Hippler and colleagues, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Hippler D, Hu N, Steiner M, Scholtz G, Franz G. 2011. Experimental mineralization of crustacean eggs leads to surprising tissue conservation: new implications for the fossilization of Precambrian-Cambrian embryos. Biogeosciences Discussions 8: 12051-12077. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/bgd-8-12051-2011

Abstract

Phosphatized globular microfossils from the Ediacaran and Lower Cambrian of South China represent an impressive record of early animal evolution and development, however their affinity based on putative embryonic metazoan, bacterial and inorganic features is strongly debated. Understanding key processes and conditions that cause exceptional egg and embryo preservation and fossilization are therefore crucial for a reliable interpretation of their phylogenetic position. Taphonomic experiments on eggs of the marbled crayfish indicate a close link between early mineralization and rapid anaerobic decay of the endochorional envelope, producing different preservational stages of degradation resembling the various decay stages observed in the fossil record. Stabilization of the spherical morphology was achieved by pre-heating of the eggs. Complete surface mineralization occurred under reduced conditions within one to two weeks, with fine-grained brushite (CaHPO₄·2H₂O) over calcite as the dominating mineral phase. Although the endochorional envelope was not preserved, experiments resulted in exceptional preservation of the embryonic tissue at the cellular level. Thus our findings suggest that the mechanisms of decay, preservation of surface structures, and mineral replacement in the experiment and during fossilization of Cambrian embryos were likely operating at a similar rationale.

Keywords: None provided.

Note: This discussion paper is under review for the journal Biogeosciences. This journal has an editorial policy that differs from many other journals, described as “innovative two-stage publication process with Public Peer-Review & Interactive Public Discussion.” The paper is initially published – permanently archived – in Biogeosciences Discussions, to receive comments (which are also archived). If the paper is accepted by the editors of Biogeosciences, the final version appears in that journal as the “copy of record.” If not, the paper remains in Biogeosciences Discussions, does not contribute to the Biogeosciences’ Impact Factor, etc.

#SciDone!

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:12:00 +0000

And there’s the siren! The #SciFund challenge has came to an end! Here are some of my initial reactions to the experience.

Things that I didn’t expect:

Fewer people, bigger donations. I thought most donations would be small – a dollar or two – and projects would have hundreds of supporters. Instead, projects had tens of supporters contributing $10-20, and more, often much more. Consequently, my “I make my target if everyone chips in 50 cents” pitch to my several thousand followers on Twitter and Google Plus wasn’t effective.

Traditional media still rules. The break out success story was, without a doubt, Kristina Kilgrove’s Roman DNA project. There’s no doubt that it made it because it was on the CNN website.

Cool beats practical: Given how much talk there is on how people want to see “results” and “return on investment” in traditional funding, my one post where I described how my research might have a practical pay-off to aquaculture got the least hits of anything I did to promote my project over six weeks.

Weak relationship between video views and dollars. “Duck force” got more than ten times the views of my video, but it didn’t get ten times the donations.

Front end loaded: I expected most funds to come in at the very beginning and the very end. RocketHub confirmed that this is the normal pattern. But the “bump” in the last few days was much smaller than I expected. On my project, the amount of dollars raised and time elapsed were pretty tightly correlated.

So emotional: I touched on this before here. I got way more wrapped up in this tiny little fundraising effort than most other projects.

Not much variation. Most projects raised about the same amount, regardless of their targets. $1,000 or so seems to be the sweet spot for now.

I made the right call to keep my project target small. At one point, I almost raised it, and if I had, I don’t think I would have made it. Projects that want to raise ten grand are either going to have to be brilliant or wait for the crowdfunding of science to mature.

Things that disappointed me:

Notice us! We didn’t get as much attention from science media as I expected. No coverage in the Science, Nature, The Guardian, The New York Times, Quirks and Quarks, and so on.

Whiff: Thirty-nine projects didn’t meet their targets.

Low gear: I was hoping to be one of the first projects to get past the post. I though that I would have a good shot at it, based on responses of people to whom I showed my video, and that I had one of the lowest targets.

Left undone: I had ideas for three more videos that I didn’t get to make.

Things that made me happy:

Mad skills: I learned a lot about how to make short videos. I may be doing more.

Total: Over $75,000 for science!

Hits! Ten projects met their targets.

This time, it’s personal: And one of them was mine.

If #SciFund were to go again:

I would say: Yes. Even though it’s inefficient, it’s fun. And as I noted, I’m unlikely to walk away completely empty-handed, which is usually what I get for writing big grant applications.

Stay home: I would try not to go to the biggest scientific meeting in the world for a week. I felt I lost quite a bit of momentum because of that.

More focus: Not my call, but at first we had over 200 people express interest in doing this. We ended up with 49 live projects. I wonder if even that was spreading attention too thin.

There will be much more analysis of the #SciFund challenge in the days and months to come. It was a social experiment, and we are all scientists, after all. But for now, this is...

Photo by viking_79 on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

A #SciFund success story!

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:54:00 +0000

We. have. MADE IT!

I was sitting at home, working on just one last video to try to convince people to support my #SciFund project, when I heard the sound of an email alert. When I saw it was from RocketHub, I was excited, because I had been getting close to my target. How much closer might I get?

When I read the email, I almost had a heart attack. It was enough to push me past the finish line!

My day went from this:

To this:

(Since I was sitting at a computer, of course my first move was to tweet about it.)

The #SciFund challenge isn’t over! I still want to see if I can squeeze out one more video promoting my project. We are allowed to have donations exceed the target. If there is enough money, I will take a student with me on the expedition! And RocketHub even rewards people who fuel a project after it hits its target with the Supernova badge!

And for those who watched my promo video all the way to the end, you’ll know I have another project I promised to reveal if I met my target:

The Beach of the Goliath Crabs!

I will be revealing the secret of this project soon!

Thank you to those who have supported this project, either financially or morally!

(Crossposted from NeuroDojo.)

Shen and colleagues, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Shen H, Braband A, Scholtz G. 2011. Mitogenomic analysis of decapod phylogeny. Zitteliana B30: 46. http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12441/1/zitteliana_2011_b30.pdf (Conference abstract only)

Abstract

For comprehensive study of decapod phylogeny on mitochondrial genome level, we completely sequenced 13 decapods. Together with available 32 decapods from GenBank, the datasets now covered all major decapod taxa. From the sequence aspect, Maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) of nucleotide, genome and amino acid datasets revealed similar topologies at the higher level relationships: Brachyura,Anomala), Thalassinida), Astacidea), Achelata), Stenopodidea), Caridea), Dendrobranchiata). Only Polychelida received two different positions: the basal branch of Reptantia in ML analysis of amino acid data and the sister group of Astacidea in the resting analyses. On the family level, Thalassinida is paraphyletic, which is consistent with some morphological and some recent molecular results (e.g. de Saint Laurent 1973, Tsang et al. 2008), other taxa are monophyletic. These major results confirm some of the traditional morphological views. In the gene arrangements aspect, two notable features in astacid mitogenomes evolution have been observed: a huge inversion happened in Procambarus fallax f. virginalis, Homarus gammarus and one priapulid Priapulus caudatus is supposed to be of convergent nature within the Ecdysozoa; complete loss of protein coding gene nad2 in H. gammarus and partial loss in Enoplometopus occidentalis are supposed to be synapomorphic character for Nephropidae. Additionally, a new gene rearrangement model – “invertion triggered duplication” model is also proposed according to decapod gene rearrangements. Anyhow, the mitogenomes show a good potential to resolve the relationship within Decapoda.

Keywords: None provided.

Kitten or crayfish?

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

We’re into the last two weeks of the #SciFund challenge! And I’m getting just a little punch drunk out here...

And so, I prove yet again that everything on the Internet eventually turns to pictures of cats.

For those who have supported me already: Thank you once again!

For everyone else: Hey, isn’t it payday today? Would you miss a couple of bucks? Even a few bucks will help me meet my target!

You should visit RocketHub and support crayfish research!

“The mouse model”, which I prefer to call “mice”

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:05:00 +0000

Daniel Engber has a mammoth set of articles on Slate on the astonishing amount of research done on mice, and the creation of the predominant model organism for all biomedical research, possibly for all of biology.

It’s a epic trilogy on the creation of the model organism, and just how far you can take that research if your goal is to cure human diseases.

The mouse trap: “The modern lab mouse is one of the most glorious products of industrial biomedicine. Yet this powerful tool might have reached the limit of its utility. What if it's taught us all it can?”
The trouble with Black-6: “In truth, the armadillos, prairie voles, and the other exotic models live only at the margins of biomedicine.”
The anti-mouse: “Still, slow science may have rich rewards, and the decisions we make today—on whether to invest in new model organisms or build out the ones we already have—are sure to have profound effects on the (human) generations to come.”

And a bonus coda:

The end of the maze

Lengthy, but widely-praised – and rightfully so. Excellent investigative science journalism.

The #SciFund team-up!

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

One of the things I love about being in the #SciFund challenge?

Teamwork.

The advantage of #SciFund is that nobody is going it alone. We have been able to share ideas and bounce ideas around between each other, and have stronger projects and more visibility than if any one of us was trying this on our own.

In that spirit, let me introduce fellow #SciFund challenger, Marisa Tellez!

P.S.—I’m stupidly happy with how this came out.

The #SciFund challenge: Half-way

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:58:00 +0000

Three weeks down; three weeks to go.

We’re at the halfway point in the #SciFund challenge, and my project is 51% funded. I’m on target to meet my funding goal, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

What has it all been like so far?

I’m a raging inferno of emotions here.

The moments when you see the Rocketbut email coming in announcing, “Your project has been fueled!” are great big highs – the amount does not matter. It’s just knowing that someone cared enough to help, and that you’re moving towards the goal, that make each one of those emails sweet.

But when the days go by with no emails... it’s pretty damn depressing.

Even when I know that most of the action is going to happen in the first and last weeks, and I know that it’s going to be hard to maintain momentum in the middle of the campaign (that is to say, right now), that intellectual knowledge doesn’t stop me from moping a bit when a day goes without the needle on the gauge budging.

And the media coverage is also encouraging. There’s been so much that I just haven’t been able to keep track of it all (but fortunately, there’s a compilation here). But it’s almost as encouraging to read something like this in Forbes as it is to see a donation:

My son and I watched the Indiana Jones-like video from scientist, Zen Faulkes, and thought, “we should ‘fuel’ this project.”

Why, yes. Yes, you should. ;)

I was also interviewed by Jennifer Welsh for her LiveScience article, which has been reprinted and reproduced on several other sites.

My project also gets an mention in the Daily Mail article on SciFund. I’m a bit... miffed, I suppose, that they are characterising all the #SciFund projects as “wacky,” when we are all bona fide scientists with serious projects.

Also, I wanted to point out a discussion that happened on Google Plus about trusting the #SciFund participants with your donations, and how you know those dollars make a difference.

The highs are higher, and the lows are lower, than I ever expected. I just cannot maintain the same detached, “We’ll see how it goes” attitude that I take with normal grant submissions. There, I submit the manuscript, but have more more contact with the thing for months. Here, there’s almost daily contact, even when it’s not necessarily donations.

P.S.—I’m working on a few new things related to my project that I hope you will see before the end of the week!

Photo by ♥KatB Photography♥ on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

The curious case of crustacean colours

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

From time to time, you will see news of a lobster being caught with some unusual colour, like orange, blue, or calico. Some even become celebrities, of sorts. And within the pet trade, brightly coloured variations of crayfish (typically bright blue) are widely prized.

What determines colour in crustaceans generally? It’s a complicated mix.

The most dramatic colour variants are caused by genetics. In crayfish, several colour morphs are due to simple recessive genes (Black and Huner 1980), of the sort you learned about in high school biology.

Marmorkrebs are genetically identical, but they are not physically identical, and this extends to their colour. The article about them in Tropical Fish Hobbyist mentions the variation that you can get in the colour. Since these differences cannot be genetic, they must be environmental.

Bowman investigated this in crayfish decades ago by placing crayfish in normal tanks, tanks painted black, and tanks painted white. Crayfish placed in black tanks had more red colouration, and those in the white tanks, more white colouration. Bowman also noted that animals that had become adapted to the bright white tanks did not darken up again after being placed into black surroundings. There are limits to how flexible the colour changes are.

Similar changes in colour have been seen with hippid sand crabs (Bauchau and Passelecq-Gérìn 1987; Wenner 1972). These crabs are diggers, and those that live in dark beaches of volcanic sand tend to have darker carapace colours, while those living in white beaches of coral sand are lighter. If they are switched to different colours of sand, they can slowly change their carapace colour for a better match.

Why might there be variation in colours from Marmorkrebs in the same tank? Even within the same tank, small crayfish are unlikely to have the same light and food. Crayfish do fight and establish dominance, so some individuals may be consistently getting the prime locations in the tank and first crack at food.

References

Bauchau AG, Passelecq-Gérìn E. 1987. Morphological color changes in anomuran decapods of the genus Hippa. Indo-Malayan Zoology 4(1): 135-144.

Black JB, Huner JV. 1980. Genetics of the red swamp crawfish, Procambarus clarkii (Girard): state-of-the-art. Proceedings of the World Mariculture Society 11(1-4): 535-543. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-7345.1980.tb00147.x

Bowman TE. 1942. Morphological color change in the crayfish. The American Naturalist 76(764): 332-336. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2457208

Wenner AM. 1972. Incremental color change in an anomuran decapod Hippa pacifica Dana. Pacific Science 26: 346-353.

Additional: See this post on why colours change when a crustacean is cooked.

Selling invaders

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Myrmecos has a post looking at the online sale of exotic, and invasive, ant species. His take is simple:

This store needs to be shut down NOW.

I don’t know why anyone would have an ant as a “pet,” but regardless... Regardless of what you consider a pet, be responsible.

The #SciFund Challenge launches!

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

The wait is over.

The final version of Doctor Zen and the Amazon Crayfish Civilization is now ready for viewing at RocketHub! If you have three minutes, you have more than enough time to learn about my project in the #SciFund Challenge!

Why can’t you watch the video here? Because I want you to go to RocketHub, and not only watch mine, but look at the other insanely cool projects that have come in from around the world. If you don’t want to support me, please consider supporting someone else.

The #SciFund Challenge is an experiment in funding science. Over the next six weeks, I will be asking for your help in raising money for a research project. I’ll be talking more about the whys and wherefores in the next few days.

Want to learn more? Or perhaps even... donate?

You should go to RocketHub right now!

Celebrate diversity: Absent fathers might not be missing fathers

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:49:00 +0000

That you don’t see males around when a female gives birth or lays eggs doesn’t mean that a male wasn’t involved. Females of many species can store sperm for long periods, sometimes their entire lives. Queen honeybees, for instance, go on a single “nuptial flight”, and the the sperm they gain on that flight is enough for the rest of her life, which can be several years.

A rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) is making the news with this point. A female that had been isolated for five years recently had nineteen little snakes. After having been alone for so long, parthenogenesis seemed a possible candidate to explain the happy occasion.

Not so. Genetic tests showed the offspring had genes from another animal besides momma, so this female had mated at some time in the past. How far back? Not known.

All of this means that determining parthenogenesis is trickier than it first appears.

Crayfish can also store sperm (Albaugh 1973), but how long is the upper limit? I’m not sure. So pet owners, just because the lone crayfish you got a while ago had babies doesn’t mean it’s a Marmorkrebs or is reproducing asexually. It may have just been biding its time.

References

Albaugh DW. 1973. A case of long-term sperm retention by a female crayfish (Decapoda, Astacidae). The Southwestern Naturalist 18: 97-98.

Booth W, Schuett GW. 2011. Molecular genetic evidence for alternative reproductive strategies in North American pitvipers (Serpentes, Viperidae): long-term sperm storage and facultative parthenogenesis. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society: In press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01782.x

Photo by OZinOH on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

Coming soon...

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:40:00 +0000

Tracking your colony: SAPling

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Where was this when I started my Marmorkrebs colony?

A new article in The Journal of Experimental Biology describes a software package called SAPling that is intended to track the pedigree of entire colonies of asexually reproducing animals. You can find the software at: http://genomics.princeton.edu/schoetzlab/software.html.

I’ve downloaded the software, which is written in Java. I have not quite figured out how to run the program yet, though. There’s no standard *.exe file to run. If anyone knows how to get Java *.class files going, I would be most appreciative of any pointers!

Reference

Thomas MA, Schötz E-M. 2011. SAPling: a Scan-Add-Print barcoding database system to label and track asexual organisms. The Journal of Experimental Biology 214(21): 3518-3523. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.059048

Going small without going home

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:12:00 +0000

Over at the SciFund Challenge blog, I have a guest post about how the current grant proposal system strongly pressures scientists to ask for lots of money, even if the project doesn’t need it.

Big science is a wonderful thing. But we need new ways to fund small science. There are many projects where a few bucks here and there will grease a lot of wheels. We shouldn’t have to have the same level of difficulty in getting, and spending, small pots of money as the big pools of money.

I will be promoting Marmorkrebs research as part of this crowdfuning challenge in November. It will be fun!

The SciFund Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:52:00 +0000

I’ve been very pleased that non-scientists have been good enough to support Marmorkrebs.org projects in the past with a bit of their time. The contributions of pet owners have been featured in two papers from my lab to date.

In that spirit, I will be participating in the SciFund Challenge! This is an experiment in social networking and crowdfunding. In November and December, participating scientists will try to raise a small amount of money for a research project. This will be conducted in association with Rockethub.

I will have more details as we get closer to the official launch of the project. In the meantime, check out the SciFund blog for more news and explanations for the rationale behind this project.

References

Faulkes Z. 2010. The spread of the parthenogenetic marbled crayfish, Marmorkrebs (Procambarus sp.), in the North American pet trade. Aquatic Invasions 5(4): 447-450. http://dx.doi.org/10.3391/ai.2010.5.4.16

Jimenez SA, Faulkes Z. 2010. Establishment and care of a laboratory colony of parthenogenetic marbled crayfish, Marmorkrebs. Invertebrate Rearing 1(1): 10-18. http://inverts.info/content/establishment-and-care-laboratory-colony-parthenogenetic-marbled-crayfish-marmorkrebs

Being a fish out of water

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0000

It might be tricky to keep mangrove rivulus in your typical aquarium. Mangrove rivulus are rather found of jumping out of water – and staying there.

Being out of water is a rather different place from being in the water, and so this fish obviously have some evolutionary adaptations that allow it to pull off this stunt. But a new paper asks a different, possibly more subtle: do mangrove rivulus adapt to being in or out of water in the short term?

Mangrove rivulus have an advantage for studying these sorts of short-term physiological changes, as many of them are genetically identical, because they are hermaphrodites - not all that unusual among animals, but that they are self-fertilizing hermaphrodites is a rare and exceptional feature among vertebrates.

Turko and colleagues first did a simple correlative study, allowing the fish to jump out of their tanks as often as they want. Most stayed in the water most of the time, but a few appeared to have what would have been a death wish in most other fish: they were out of the water almost two thirds of the time (64%). The authors saw differences in the gill shape that were correlated with the amount of time fish spent in or out of water.

But because correlation does not mean causation, the authors sensibly went back and did an experiment. They monitored animals for a week, then prevented them all from leaving the water, sacrificed half to check on their gills, and then left the remaining half go back to being free to leave the water if they chose.

The first that were prevented from leaving the water had different gill shapes than those that were allowed to return to the air. This strong suggests that the fishes’ behaviour drove the changes in the gill morphology.

But there is a problem in interpretation here. At the start of the second experiment, the fish were leaving water rather less than in the first correlation study. And there were no correlations between gill shape and the fish’s behaviour after the first week, as there was in the first study. The differences in gill shape emerged only after the week were the fish were forced to stay within water. The researchers suggest that there may be a minimum time the fish have to spend out of water for the gill remodeling effect to occur.

This makes me wonder if there were be a way to do the experiment were fish were forced to stay out of water for set periods of time. Here, the experimenters were at the mercy of the fish voluntarily leaving the water. It may be a little bit trickier, but the results would be much easier to interpret.

Related posts

Conquest of the land, a la Chubby Checker (on NeuroDojo)
Celebrate diversity: The fish that fertilizes itself

Reference

Turko A, Earley R, Wright P. 2011. Behaviour drives morphology: voluntary emersion patterns shape gill structure in genetically identical mangrove rivulus. Animal Behaviour 82(1): 39-47. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.03.001

Molting in a nightclub

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:00:00 +0000

AT least, molting in a nightclub is the best explanation I have at hand for the soundtrack on this video.

Crayfish kryptonite

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:00:00 +0000

When I talked on Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour last week about Marmorkrebs, Kirsten asked me at one point, “What’s their kryptonite?”

On the show, thinking on my feet, I said that Marmorkrebs might have some competitive disadvantages because they are a small species, and size is a very important factor in crayfish competition when animals are in one-on-one interactions. (When you match individuals for size, Marmorkrebs hold their own, however).

This is a similar question to the one I fielded at the Ecological Society of America meeting a few weeks ago. One crayfish get loose in a watershed, there is not much that you can do.

In a bit of l’esprit d’escalier, I might have added in my reply to Kiki that the kryptonite of marbled crayfish might be their reliance on humans. In general, crayfish are not all that mobile. Yes, some species are comfortable with leaving the water and making a portage to a new home, but in general, they will spread from one watershed to another only fairly slowly. They are horrible once they get established, but they have a hard time getting that first toehold without humans moving them around.

Left to their own devices, Marmorkrebs never would have made it to Madagascar, or Japan, or anywhere else. In North America, Marmorkrebs are human captives. Let’s keep it that way.

Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour

noreply@blogger.com (Zen Faulkes) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:37:00 +0000

This week, I had a lovely live chat with Dr. Kirsten Sanford, a.k.a. Dr. Kiki on Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour! She titled Episode 110, “Invasion of the Marmorkrebs!”

You can listen to the audio, as well as subscribe to the show’s audio and video feeds, here.

Additional: And the video is now up on iTunes, YouTube, and elsewhere!