2 posts · 508 views
Natural history and zoology in the Australian tropics.
Bronwen Scott
2 posts
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- October 12, 2012
- 11:06 PM
- 268 views
Twilight's home: A new cave-dwelling coral from the western Pacific
by Bronwen Scott in Snail's Eye View
Cross-posted to Bioscience Writing & Editing. Leptoseris corals love the gloom. They grow in shaded nooks and crevices and on the sea floor at depths where many other corals do not thrive. They are particularly common in mesophotic reefs, where the light is muted and all but a few wavelengths are filtered out. Several species live at more than 100 m and one, Leptoseris hawaiiensis, has been recorded at 160 m at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.This low-light lifestyle makes it awkward for........ Read more »
- October 5, 2012
- 03:00 AM
- 240 views
A trick of the tail: How snails avoid snail-eating snakes
by Bronwen Scott in Snail's Eye View
There's not much chance of a land snail outrunning a predator, so a slow-moving gastropod must rely on other measures to stay out of trouble. The shell is an effective defence, but it's not perfect. Some predators can crush them. Others, such as the song thrush and pitta, smash them open on rocks. Carabid beetles and firefly larvae are small enough to breach the defences by slipping through the only gap in the armour — the shell aperture. Even the best protection has a weak spot.Not only do sn........ Read more »
Hoso, Masaki. (2012) Cost of autotomy drives ontogenetic switching in antipredator mechanisms under developmental constraints in a land snail. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1943
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