18 posts · 5,888 views
Marine biologist and invertebrate zoologist.
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- March 14, 2010
- 12:40 AM
- 54 views
Say Hello to My Little Friend
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
What looks like a worm, is completely symmetrical in cross-section, and in the words of Dr. Peter Holland:
“It has no mouth, no gut, no brain and no nerve cord. It doesn’t have a left or right side or a top or bottom – we can’t even tell which end is the front!” (quoted from Physorg)
Its [...]... Read more »
Jimenez-Guri, E., Okamura, B., & Holland, P. (2007) Origin and evolution of a myxozoan worm. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 47(5), 752-758. DOI: 10.1093/icb/icm026
- March 12, 2010
- 03:05 PM
- 27 views
Isopods Cause Reproductive Death in Shrimp
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Isopods, you know them as those adorable little roly-poly bugs under rocks in the forest or the gigantic Bathynomus of the deep sea. They are also those cute and cuddly parasites in the gill chamber of shrimp too! Awww, How special! In a recent issue of JMBA-UK, Calado et al. describe how these fuzzy wittle [...]... Read more »
Calado, R., Bartilotti, C., Goy, J., & Dinis, M. (2008) Parasitic castration of the stenopodid shrimp Stenopus hispidus (Decapoda: Stenopodidae) induced by the bopyrid isopod Argeiopsis inhacae (Isopoda: Bopyridae). Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, 88(02). DOI: 10.1017/S0025315408000684
- February 3, 2010
- 12:53 PM
- 93 views
Deep-Water Origin of Freshwater Eels
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Larval eel jaw diversity from Michael Miller 2009 ASMB 2(4): 1-94.
There are all sort of eels in this world. Big ones, small ones, gulper eels, morays. But the most tastiest are the Japanese freshwater eel. Nothing says Ohayo Gozaimasu like fresh eel sushi topped with a mountain of pickled ginger and lightly spackled with sweet [...]... Read more »
Inoue, J., Miya, M., Miller, M., Sado, T., Hanel, R., Hatooka, K., Aoyama, J., Minegishi, Y., Nishida, M., & Tsukamoto, K. (2010) Deep-ocean origin of the freshwater eels. Biology Letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0989
- February 2, 2010
- 10:19 PM
- 99 views
‘Safe’ Water-Based Drill Cuttings Affect Seafloor Animals
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Oil and gas extraction is pervasive among the coasts of the world. In many areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of west Africa, resource exploration companies have been moving into pretty deep waters. Many rigs use water-based muds in the drilling process. It is considered to the best alternative because [...]... Read more »
Hilde C. Trannum, Hans C. Nilsson, Morten T. Schaanning, & Sigurd Øxnevad. (2009) Effects of sedimentation from water-based drill cuttings and natural sediment on benthic macrofaunal community structure and ecosystem processes. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. info:/10.1016/j.jembe.2009.12.004
- October 30, 2009
- 06:13 AM
- 232 views
New Species Friday 10/30/09 – Ophryotrocha fabriae
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Say hello to my little fried… In fact, this guy is so small you might have missed if you didn’t use the right sieve mesh size! So small, that they are best viewed as a scanning electron micrograph (SEM) image like the one on the right. Ophryotrocha fabriae is a new polychaete annelid in the [...]... Read more »
Paxton, H., & Morineaux, M. (2009) Three Species of Dorvilleidae (annelida: Polychaeta) Associated With Atlantic Deep-Sea Reducing Habitats, With The Description of Ophryotrocha Fabriae, New Species. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 122(1), 14-25. DOI: 10.2988/08-22.1
- October 28, 2009
- 12:22 AM
- 264 views
(Sieve) Size Matters
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Enter the sieve. It is a marine biologists best friend, saving hours of sorting and enabling quantification of fauna. In fact you can get these miracle workers at McMaster-Carr for a mere $40-50. You take good care of these puppies and they will last several graduate student’s lifetimes! I prefer the 500 micron mesh size [...]... Read more »
Gage, J., Hughes, D., & Gonzalez Vecino, J. (2002) Sieve size influence in estimating biomass, abundance and diversity in samples of deep-sea macrobenthos. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 97-107. DOI: 10.3354/meps225097
Breea Govenar, Derk C. Bergquist, Istvan A. Urcyuo, James T. Eckner, & Charles R. Fisher. (2002) Three Ridgeia piscesae assemblages from a single Juan de Fuca sulphide edifice: structurally different and functionally similar. Cahiers Biologie Marine , 247-252. info:/
Pavithran, S., Ingole, B., Nanajkar, M., & Goltekar, R. (2009) Importance of sieve size in deep-sea macrobenthic studies. Marine Biology Research, 5(4), 391-398. DOI: 10.1080/17451000802441285
- October 16, 2009
- 12:20 PM
- 345 views
Friday Freak 10/16/09 – Gersemia juliepackardae
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
TGIF IS DEAD LONG LIVE TGIF!
Craig and I are making some changes around these parts. You’ll notice them soon enough. One change starts now. We are getting rid of one of our longest running and most successful (not very) commerical franchises. We are disbanding the traditional Friday Deep Sea Pic and TGIF. We will [...]... Read more »
G.C. Williams, & L. Lundsten. (2009) The nephtheid soft coral genus Gersemia Marenzeller, 1878, with the description of a new species from the northeast Pacific and a review of two additional species (Octocorallia: Alcyonacea). Zool. Med. Leiden, 83(34), 1067-1081. info:other/
- August 20, 2009
- 02:48 AM
- 366 views
Shrimp Tails: Describing a New Species
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
... Read more »
Zelnio, K., & Hourdez, S. (2009) A New Species of Alvinocaris (Crustacea: Decapoda: Caridea: Alvinocarididae) from Hydrothermal Vents at The Lau Basin, Southwest Pacific, and a Key to The Species of Alvinocarididae. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 122(1), 52-71. DOI: 10.2988/07-28.1
- July 24, 2009
- 01:47 PM
- 488 views
Deep Sea Corals and Methane Seeps
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
This is a tale of cause and effect in the deep sea woven by threads of hypotheses held together by the loom of targeted sampling efforts and multiple lines of evidence. You see, dear readers, once upon a time existed an observation. Hovland (1989) noticed along the Norwegian coastline that carbonate reefs occurred in sediment [...]... Read more »
Becker, E., Cordes, E., Macko, S., & Fisher, C. (2009) Importance of seep primary production to Lophelia pertusa and associated fauna in the Gulf of Mexico. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 56(5), 786-800. DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2008.12.006
Hovland, M. (1990) Do carbonate reefs form due to fluid seepage?. Terra Nova, 2(1), 8-18. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3121.1990.tb00031.x
HOVLAND, M., & THOMSEN, E. (1997) Cold-water corals—are they hydrocarbon seep related?. Marine Geology, 137(1-2), 159-164. DOI: 10.1016/S0025-3227(96)00086-2
Hovland, M. (2003) Do Norwegian deep-water coral reefs rely on seeping fluids?. Marine Geology, 198(1-2), 83-96. DOI: 10.1016/S0025-3227(03)00096-3
- May 21, 2009
- 11:57 PM
- 529 views
Trilobites Ride the Crazy Train
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
A new paper published recently in the journal Geology reports on peculiar conga party lines of our paleo-friend, the Trilobite. Gutierrez-Marco and colleagues discovered a quarry replete with marine invertebrate fossil, including potentially some of the largest trilobite specimens ever found. Curiously though, these capricious little critters were found exhibiting some rather gregarious behavior! They [...]... Read more »
Gutierrez-Marco, J., Sa, A., Garcia-Bellido, D., Rabano, I., & Valerio, M. (2009) Giant trilobites and trilobite clusters from the Ordovician of Portugal. Geology, 37(5), 443-446. DOI: 10.1130/G25513A.1
- May 21, 2009
- 02:56 PM
- 564 views
Do Vent Crabs Do It Under the Gyre?
by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News
Vent crabs live in the dark depths of the ocean. Previous studies have shown that the vent crab Bythograea thermydron has a reproductive cycle synchronized with Spring and Summer phytoplankton blooms 2.5 km above the East Pacific Rise. It was hypothesized that female crabs moved away from the toxic vents, once impregnated, to raise their [...]... Read more »
Hilário, A., Vilar, S., Cunha, M., & Tyler, P. (2009) Reproductive aspects of two bythograeid crab species from hydrothermal vents in the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 153-160. DOI: 10.3354/meps07858
McKitrick, M. (1993) Phylogenetic Constraint in Evolutionary Theory: Has It Any Explanatory Power?. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 24(1), 307-330. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001515
- July 16, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 433 views
Insect Ejaculate Attracts Parasites x2
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
Kevin and I have been anxiously waiting for PNAS to release this one, since we saw it in Nature A few years ago a Nature Brief Communication described the interesting relationship between the cabbage white butterfly (Pieris brassicae) and the parasitic wasp Trichogramma brassicae. The wasp parasitizes the eggs of the butterfly laid on plants of the cabbage family. The wasp, when given the choice between virgin or mated cabbage white butterfly females, was able to detect and showed a strong preference for the mated females. The authors determined that the wasps used a chemical cue ... Read more »
Nina Fatouros, Gabriella Bukovinszkine'Kiss, Lucas A Kalkers, Roxina Soler Gamborena, Marcel Dicke, & Monika Hilker. (2005) Oviposition-induced plant cues: do they arrest Trichogramma wasps during host location?. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 115(1), 207-215. DOI: 10.1111/j.1570-7458.2005.00245.x
Nina Fatouros, Martinus E Huigens, Joop J van Loon, Marcel Dicke, & Monika Hilker. (2005) Chemical communication: Butterfly anti-aphrodisiac lures parasitic wasps. Nature, 433(7027), 704-704. DOI: 10.1038/433704a
N Fatouros, C Broekgaarden, G Bukovinszkine'Kiss, J J van Loon, R Mumm, M E Huigens, M Dicke, & M Hilker. (2008) Male-derived butterfly anti-aphrodisiac mediates induced indirect plant defense. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707809105
- July 11, 2008
- 11:01 AM
- 430 views
Free Access to Internet Resources Helps Conservation
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
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 helpe... Read more »
Veerle Van den Eynden, Michael Oatham, & Winston Johnson. (2008) How free access internet resources benefit biodiversity and conservation research: Trinidad and Tobago's endemic plants and their conservation status. Oryx, 42(03). DOI: 10.1017/S0030605308007321
- June 15, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 349 views
Optically Buggin'
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
It's an overcast ugly day here, so this morning while waiting for the sea shanty festival to start, I thought I should get something more serious posted to the site. This one made the rounds of the physical and material science news sites a few weeks ago when the original press release went out. After the paper was actually published I was able to find some time to read it —"Bugs" and computing are intimately linked throughout computing history (and electronic engineering in general). Moths were the nemesis of early vacuum tube computer operators as they would fry themselves o... Read more »
Jeremy Galusha, Lauren R Richey, John S Gardner, Jennifer N Cha, & Michael H Bartl. (2008) Discovery of a diamond-based photonic crystal structure in beetle scales. Physical Review E, 77(5). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.77.050904
- May 25, 2008
- 11:01 PM
- 342 views
Cave Inverts Prefer Exotics
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
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... Read more »
NICOLE HILLS, GRANT HOSE, ANDREW CANTLAY, & BRAD MURRAY. (2008) Cave invertebrate assemblages differ between native and exotic leaf litter. Austral Ecology, 33(3), 271-277. DOI: 10.1111/j.1442-9993.2007.01814.x
- May 25, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 361 views
Crustacean Larval Degeneration
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
I remember the brief discussion in Invert Biology about the 100 year old mystery of the "y-larvae" crustacean. The jist of the conversation was that there was still much to learn about larval development of many crustaceans and there were some which were known as larvae but not as adults, for instance... "y-larvae" (also known as Facetotectans), a taxa of crustaceans which is described solely on the basis of the naupliar and cyprid larval stages.Pachenik's Invertebrate Biology, the standard undergraduate textbook for invert biology/zoology, doesn't mention y-larva at all, while Br... Read more »
Henrik Glenner, Jens Hoeg, Mark Grygier, & Fujita Yoshihisa. (2008) Induced metamorphosis in crustacean y-larvae: Towards a solution to a 100-year-old riddle. BMC Biology, 6(21).
- April 8, 2008
- 11:01 PM
- 412 views
Isopods Cause Reproductive Death in Shrimp
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
Isopods, you know them as those adorable little roly-poly bugs under rocks in the forest or the gigantic Bathynomus of the deep sea. They are also those cute and cuddly parasites in the gill chamber of shrimp too! Awww, How special! In the recent issue of JMBA-UK, Calado et al. describe how these fuzzy wittle darlings castrate their shrimpity hosts.The isopod in question is the Argeiopsis inhacae, a member of the parasitic family of isopods - Bopyridae. They don't start off as the lovely parasite "friend" of shrimp. The larvae begins life as a free swimmer until it finds a copepod ... Read more »
Ricardo Calado, Cátia Bartilotti, Joseph Goy, & Maria Dinis. (2008) Parasitic castration of the stenopodid shrimp Stenopus hispidus (Decapoda: Stenopodidae) induced by the bopyrid isopod Argeiopsis inhacae (Isopoda: Bopyridae). Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, 88(02). DOI: 10.1017/S0025315408000684
- February 5, 2008
- 12:01 AM
- 380 views
Oops! Another Discovery Institute Abuse & Misuse
by Kevin Zelnio in The Other 95%
I guess its to be expected, Intelligent Design proponents just can't seem to tell the truth. Case in point: Casey Luskin, a Discovery Institute lackey attempts his first take at participating in the Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting (BPR3) with a post demonstrating how a recently published article in PLoS ONE using the icon copyrighted by BPR3. Anyone is free to use this icon, you've seen it many times on this blog, so long as they register their blog and abide by the guidelines of this organization. The icon is important not only because it signifies that a post is a thoughtful c... Read more »
Leslie Orgel. (2008) The Implausibility of Metabolic Cycles on the Prebiotic Earth. PLoS Biology, 6(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060018
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