Unidentified Marine Invertebrate

I found this interesting blob on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida. It was attached to the outside surface of a broken sea shell, so my guess is that it did not at one time live inside the shell. The ridges on the shell make it look sort of like a scallop, although it doesn't have the "wings" on the hinged side of the shell that you normally associate with a scallop.

The thought did cross my mind that the blob was one time the adductor muscle of a scallop (the part we eat). If you sliced it up, each section would be a disk that looked like a scallop on your dinner plate. But if someone or something opened up the scallop shell and pulled out the adductor muscle, how would it then re-attach itself to the outside of its old shell?

I'm thinking that this blob is some type of creature independent from the shell, which attached itself to the shell when they were both living in deeper waters. When the shell washed up on shore, its hitchhiker came with it. The hole in the shell at the bottom of the photo is also odd - I'm wondering if that is how the inhabitant of this shell met his end.

Here is a better view of the "foot" of this creature, with its "toes" securely attached to the shell. Or maybe it is the "mouth", and it was busy eating microorganisms off the shell?


Here is the other side.


And here is the end.


This whole animal was about 3 inches long and 2 inches in diameter, although it was longer and skinnier when I first approached it. As it "sensed" I was taking its picture, it got shorter and fatter, as if it were tensing up from stress. About the only other thing I can tell you is that I found this in salt water (i.e. on the ocean side, not the bay side).

If anyone has any ideas as to what this might be, please leave them in the comments!

Tour of the Matanzas River

Here is something you don't see every day - a bunch of Roseate Spoonbills roosting together in a tree. It was almost comical to see. Usually you see big birds like this gracefully wading around in the water looking for fish. They are too big to gracefully perch in trees.

There are 7 spoonbills here - the pink blob at the right end is actually two spoonbills. The bird in the water toward the left is a Tri-Colored Heron (aka Louisiana Heron). You can see his main color of gray and his white belly in this photo, but he is too far away to see the third color, which is a reddish patch at the top of his throat.

We saw this very cool sight in St. Augustine, Florida, on a pontoon boat tour on the Matanzas River. Along with these and many other birds, we also saw lots of dolphins. The boat had a hydrophone, so we could hear the clicks of the dolphins along with those of "snapping shrimp".

Snapping shrimp (aka pistol shrimp) have the amazing ability to snap their claws so quickly that they produce a bubble that makes a loud snap when it pops. This snap is loud enough to stun small fish that swim by, which the shrimp then grabs and eats. It is as if the shrimp is shooting the fish, hence the name pistol shrimp.

Other highlights of the trip were the mullet fish jumping out of the water all around us, and the beds of "spitting" oysters. No one seems to know for sure why mullet jump so much. A couple of theories are to increase their oxygen intake, or to escape from larger fish who are trying to catch them.

As for the oysters, they spit as part of their feeding process. They take in a "mouth" full of water, filter out the nutrients, and loudly spit out the water high into the air. Besides putting on a fun show, they are also serving an important purpose by cleaning the water.

Real Life Cabinet of Curiosity

Earlier this month, our family took a vacation to Florida. One of the places we visited was the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine. Otto Lightner was a "collector of collections", especially collections of items from America's Gilded Age in the late 1800's.

The scene above is what greets you when you walk into the Science & Industry room. This is enough to surprise anyone, but especially me, since it was as if my blog had come to life! A while back I wrote a post on "cabinets of curiosities", and I included an old engraving of one these proto-museums:

You can't help but notice the similarity between these two pictures (hint: it is the alligator hanging from the ceiling).

I knew this could not be a coincidence. Since Mr. Lightner had passed away in 1950, I guessed he had not gotten the alligator idea from reading my blog. Maybe the present curators of the museum had read my blog and thought, "What a great idea - let's get that old stuffed alligator out of the basement and hang him on the ceiling". I knew I should have copyrighted my blog!

The truth was finally revealed when I found a copy of the above engraving on the wall of the Science & Industry room. Apparently Mr. Lightner had seen this engraving before I had, and decided to recreate it in his museum. Many of the items in this room, and even the beautiful woodworking of the display cases, was typical of cabinets of curiosities.

This got me wondering - how many other museums around the world also have stuffed alligators hanging from the ceiling? If you know of any, please tell me.

If you are ever in St. Augustine, be sure to visit the Lightner Museum. You will not be disappointed.

Here is my favorite item from Mr. Lightner's collection. What American home in the Gilded Age would be complete without a colorful ceramic mandrill?

Scientia Pro Publica #35

Welcome to the 35th edition of Scientia Pro Publica, a bi-monthly blog carnival covering science, medicine, the environment and technology. I am pleased to host Scientia here at Kind of Curious.

For this edition, I decided to organize the blog posts according to the Logic Complexity Pyramid presented by Prakhar in his blog Subterranean Homesick Alien. This pyramid places the most logical science of all, mathematics, at the top of the pyramid, the “hard sciences” such as physics which can be derived from mathematics next, then the social sciences, and finally the most complex of all, philosophy, at the base of the pyramid.

I planned to explore the question posed by Prakhar, of whether you can pass up and down the Logic Complexity Pyramid in either direction, deriving each field of science from the ones above or below it. I would organize the Scientia carnival the way science itself is organized, using logic!

After thinking about this for a while, my head started to hurt. So I decided to just organize the blog posts alphabetically. In fact, since Subterranean Homesick Alien happens to be last in this alphabetical order, and I have already discussed it, why don’t we go with REVERSE alphabetical order?

That would make Southern Fried Science next. Join David as he takes a fascinating look at the history of early American marine biology, focusing on Louis Agassiz. Agassiz was a Swiss scientist who emigrated to the US in 1846, where he continued the prolific career he had begun in Europe. Agassiz is best known for founding the famous Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Bec at Save Your Breath for Running Ponies presents some interesting zoology of her own, concerning the Black Lace Weaver spider. Skip this if you are faint of heart. These spiders eat the eggs of their siblings, and then proceed to committing matriphage (eating their mother). Kids these days have no respect for their elders!

Next, Bob O’Hara sends along a link to a post by Chris at Prerogative of Harlots. This interesting piece looks at the thought process of developing a museum exhibit. What is the best way to explain to the public that despite “global warming“, it is actually much colder now than it was at the time of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55 million years ago? Most importantly, the high temperatures back then were also the result of greenhouse gases. Although some animals evolved to live in both extremes of temperature, there is no guarantee that humans will be one of those animals.

Isis the Scientist contributes an inspiring story on her blog On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess… She was definitely a laboratory goddess this day, as she made the light bulb come on over the head of a student. If you are like me and would not be able to tell the difference between an artery and a vein, check out her easy-to-understand explanation.

Over at Ninjameys, Thonoir continues his alternative listing of Endangered Species. Thonoir’s list is based on how critically endangered the species actually is, rather than some other lists that seem to be based more on the cute and cuddly factor. This list is Arthropods Part 1 - Arachnids, Crustaceans and Millipedes. I’m glad that someone cares that there are millipedes going extinct.

Speaking of extinction, Mike The Mad Biologist brings us the disturbing news that one of the finch species studied by Darwin appears to be on the brink of extinction. It is already gone from 2 of the 3 islands that Darwin studied it on. The last island has only 2 separated populations, one with less than 100 individuals, and the other with only 5 to 10.

Possibly the only creature closer to extinction is the student that actually reads the scientific papers that their professor has assigned. Grrl Scientist, at Living the Scientific Life, describes a method for motivating students to actually read these papers. Interestingly, it is similar to the model/rival technique that was used to train Alex, the famous African Grey Parrot with a vocabulary of 150 words.

OK, no more extinction jokes. Next we hear from Lab Rat, about a bacteria that has been genetically engineered to remove atrazine (an herbicide pollutant) from the environment. More importantly, these bacteria actually MIGRATE TOWARD the atrazine. This feat was accomplished by selecting bacteria based on the function of their CheZ genes, which control motility.

Moving from artificial selection to natural selection, John at Kind of Curious (that’s me!) explains how the Haleakala Silversword plant has adapted to its harsh environment on top of Mount Haleakala in Maui.

Greg Laden at Greg Laden’s blog has finally put the nature/nurture debate to rest - at least as it relates to the oyster-catching abilities of Oystercatcher birds. Catching oysters can be deadly work, with the ever present danger of drowning. Conveniently, the beaks of Oystercatchers do not mature to a point where they can use them for catching oysters, until the birds are old enough to have learned the proper methods by observing their mothers. Nature and nurture, working together for the benefit of the Oystercatcher!

From bird’s beaks to bird’s feet, we have them all covered in this carnival. Arvind Pillai at Fins to Feet explains (with the help of some great diagrams) how dinosaur feet have evolved into bird’s feet.

Continuing the evolution trend, Bob O’Hara sends us a link to a post by Henry McGee at The End of the Pier Show. Henry reports on a session at Euro Evo Devo on the origin of segmentation in the bodies of various organisms. (For the uninitiated like myself, Euro Evo Devo is the conference of the European Society for Evolutionary Development.)

Over at the Dr. Shock website, Walter van den Broek describes a study of the calming effects of chocolate. Study subjects who were given chocolate with an increased amount of the naturally occurring ingredient y-aminobutyric acid (GABA) showed reduced stress levels while taking a math test. GABA is known to affect neurotransmission in humans.

Grrl Scientist sends along a link to Blogging the PhD, by Erika Cule. Erica explains a study in which students performed better on reading comprehension tests when the photos accompanying the text were of professionals of the same gender as the student. When both males and females were shown in the photos, the performance differences disappeared.

Brendan Locke at The BioNode describes a recent hike in the Ma-le’l Dunes of Humbolt Bay, CA. He shows the difference between the biodiversity of dunes where invasive species have been removed vs dunes that are dominated by invasives. He provides links to information on how you can help combat invasive species in your area.

Julia at Bioluminescence explains the science behind her attempts as a PhD candidate to marry population genetics and skeletal morphology.

At “Are You SciCurious?”, SciCurious describes the role of the p53 protein in creating the types of tumors that increase in frequency with age. The functioning of p53 decreases with age, so the ability of a cell to respond to a stressor such as radiation also decreases with age.

At the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, Jeremy Cherfas and Luigi Guarino explain that a certain variety of cassava known as “bitter cassava” has high levels of cyanide which must be removed through post-harvest processing. Although scientists know how to create “sweet cassava” without high levels of cyanide, these varieties are more susceptible to insect pests and to theft. The moral of the story is that “modern science” needs to take into account the needs of the local community when it comes to tinkering with their food supply.

Finally, Andrew Bernardin at the 360 Degree Skeptic provides 2 posts. The first compares the sensationalistic headline of a science news story to the more prosaic statistics contained in the body of the article. Andrew uses this as an example of how science writers need to present science as an ongoing search for truth, rather than “dumbing down” science to be a creator of truths and facts.

Andrew’s second post is a tongue-in-cheek look at a recent study claiming that inactivity may not necessarily result in obesity - possibly it may be the other way around. At some point the correlation/causation debate needs to give way to common sense.

Well, that's it for Scientia Pro Publica #35. Scientia #36 will appear at The Allotrope on August 2nd. Please send your submissions to The Allotrope or via the Scientia Pro Publica blog site.

Also, please consider hosting Scientia Pro Publica on your blog site. Hosting dates are available from September 13th to the end of the year. See the hosting calendar here. If you would like to host, please send an email via the Scientia Pro Publica blog site.

Finally, don't forget to visit the Scientia Twitter site and the SciNat Blog Carnival Twitter Site.

Circus of the Spineless #52

Welcome to the 52nd edition of Circus of the Spineless!

Hey you in the back - yeah, you - the one with the spine - get outta here! This circus is only for the spineless!

Since it's only us invertebrate lovers here, I know I can be honest with you - one of the reasons I think the spineless are so cool is that they can sometimes be very gross. You know what I mean - laying their eggs inside of other animals, eating them alive, etc., etc. So I thought that a nifty way to arrange this month's posts would be in order of grossness.

Since beauty (and grossness) are in the eye of the beholder, you may not agree with my arrangement. You may even be offended. That's OK, I don't mind, I have thick skin (actually sort of an exoskeleton).

Why don't we start at the beautiful end of the scale and work our way to the beastly end:

Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo writes about the correlation between coloration and toxicity of sea slugs. In a post about coloration, how could you not have some really beautiful photos? Zen does not disappoint!

As glorious as the photos in Zen's post are the words in the poem submitted by Elaine Medline. Elaine writes about seeing the world through a dragonfly's eyes in her blog Memorizing Nature.

Many creatures inhabit the middle world between beauty and beast. Amber Coakley at Birder's Lounge writes about the sawfly, which starts its life as a somewhat attractive larvae and ends up a scary looking adult.

Or how about an insect that is graceful when observed from afar, but gets a little ugly if you get too close? JSK at Anybody Seen My Focus demonstrates this in a series of photos of a Great Blue Skimmer dragonfly, with very bugged-out eyes.

Marine invertebrates can be that way as well, beautiful from a distance but like slimy phlegm up close. Check out the sponges and other creatures discovered by Susannah's grand-daughter at Wanderin' Weeta.

Over at Wild About Ants, the "Consult-Ant" Roberta Gibson answers a question about ant pheromones. Ants are fascinating social insects and generally not too gross. A very interesting post!

Back to Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo, this time for a review of a field study of a cricket population. This was an amazingly comprehensive study by some very patient researchers. They even tagged the crickets, which makes for a pretty funny photo.

We are now about halfway through our spectrum of grossness, so we are starting to tilt to the gross end. The Dragonfly Woman at her eponymous blog writes about aquatic insects being used as biological indicators of water quality. The Santa Cruz River in Tucson is 100% effluent (wastewater) and is filled with bloodworms. Need I say more?

Next we visit the blog of yours truly, John at Kind of Curious, where we find a moth that disguises itself as a bird dropping. Or, as one of the commenters noted, a shelf fungus.

Adrian Thysse, also known as The Bug Whisperer, provides a series of fascinating photos of an Ichneumon Wasp finding a larvae inside a log by echolocation, and then depositing its egg in the larvae. Now this is the kind of truly gross stuff I am talking about!

It is no coincidence that the revolting end of this spectrum of grossness is heavily populated by arachnids. David Winter writes about conservation of the Katipo Spider at The Atavism. Maybe it's just me, but I think most people would run from this spider.

Ted MacRae at Beetles in the Bush addresses the beauty/beast issue head on - he argues that jumping spiders are actually cute and cuddly! I'm not buying it, but he does provide some excellent close-up photos.

As we near the end of the grossness scale, our more fair readers may wish to avert their eyes. Michael Bok at Arthropoda provides an in-depth discussion (with photos!) of Camel Spiders, which are actually not true spiders but their own order within the arachnids.

What could be more gross than a spider? How about a wasp dragging a spider back to her nest to lay her eggs it its body? David Winter provides some great shots of this at The Atavism.

Finally, the post I have nominated as the most revolting, nauseating and disturbing of the bunch. Unfortunately, this one demonstrates the greed of humans, the short-sighted disregard of multiple procedures intended to protect other humans and our life-giving ecosystem. I am referring to the BP oil spill. Kevin Zelnio, administrator of Circus of the Spineless, submitted a post by Dr. Chris Mah on the Ocean Portal Blog of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Dr. Mah's post describes the impact of the BP oil spill on invertebrates in the Gulf, which may be an even greater disaster than the impact on the more photogenic vertebrates we see on television.

Well, that's a wrap for Circus of the Spineless #52. I hope nobody was offended if I called your favorite invertebrate "gross". It was all in fun.

Next month, the spineless will converge at Birder's Lounge (I hope no one gets eaten!). Send your submissions to acoakley at birderslounge dot com.

Beautiful Wood Nymph Moth

I found this guy parked next to our front porch light, along with many other nondescript tan and grey moths. I was going to tell them that we had installed "bug lights", but since they didn't seem to notice, why spoil their fun?

After much searching on the internet (he was not in my insect field guide), I finally identified him as a Beautiful Wood Nymph Moth. ("Beautiful" is actually part of his name, and not just my opinion of him.)

You can tell he is not the other common type of Wood Nymph Moth, the "Pearly" type, because of the smooth olive green line between the brown and white parts of his wing. The Pearly Wood Nymph Moth has a scalloped border between the brown and white sections, with no olive line.

Despite his name, this moth has a habit that is not so beautiful - several websites I consulted explained that his markings are meant to make him look like a bird dropping. They must mean when his wings are down, because I have never seen a bird dropping sticking up like he does.

At first, I thought those hairy things sticking out front were his antennae, but they turned out to be his front legs. After he relaxed for a while, he put up his antennae, which had been folded against his body.

Here he is from the front, with his antennae back down again.

Monterey Cypress

I was doing some research for work on wind farms, and I found that the average wind speed at a particular location can be estimated by the shape of the trees that grow there. That made me think of these pictures of Monterey Cypress trees I took in Pebble Beach, California on the beautiful 17-Mile Drive.

The photo above is the famous "Lone Cypress", which the Pebble Beach Corporation claims to have copyrighted. If you are reading this, my blog has not yet been shut down by their overzealous lawyers.

The photo below was taken from an angle that really shows the shaping of the trees. You can see that the amount of leaves and branches to the left of the left-most trunk is much less than the amount to the right of the right-most trunk. This is called "flagging", since the tree is starting to look like a flag, with the fabric (the leaves and branches) all to one side of the flagpole (the trunk).


A couple of guys actually sat down and put together a scale to gauge wind speed based on the flagging of trees. When a tree starts bending over from the wind, they call it "throwing", and when it gives up and lies down they call that "carpeting". I love their descriptive language! This table is courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory.

When I did some more reading about Monterey Cypress trees, I found that only some of their deformity is due to the wind coming off the ocean. Some of it is due to "salt pruning", which is damage to leaves due to the salty mist. So these trees are getting a double whammy, a wind that is carrying salt mist.

One more thing about the famous Lone Cypress. If you look a little closer, you will find that the Pebble Beach Corporation has protected its money-making copyrighted tree by tying it to the rock outcropping with wire.


Now for your moment of Zen, sunset on Pebble Beach: