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:

Eight Ways Elephant Seals Have Evolved

I took these photos of elephant seals at Piedras Blancas State Marine Reserve in California. Here are some interesting ways that elephant seals have adapted to their harsh environment:

1. As you can guess, their name comes from the large noses of the males. Besides being a way to scare off competing males and attract the ladies, these noses may also help males conserve moisture when they are out of the water. Elephant seals can spend up to 3 months at a time “hauled out” on the beach during breeding season, with their stored blubber their only source of energy and moisture. It is believed that some of the moisture they exhale is captured and reabsorbed by their nose.


2. Another way elephant seals conserve moisture is by producing urine that is more concentrated than many other animals. Yuck, enough said.


3. Elephant seals and monk seals are the only mammals that molt their skin all at once, rather than shedding it continuously in small amounts. This allows them to shut down blood circulation near their skin when they are in the water, helping them to keep warm, conserve energy, and build up that all-important blubber. I was at Piedras Blancas in late July, which is molting season for the males. The tan seal in the photo below has some good molting going on.



4. Elephant seals have really bad sleep apnea. But in their case it is a good thing, allowing them to conserve energy while on the beach without food or water. They can go without breathing for up to 30 minutes while lounging on the beach.


5. Another way that female elephant seals conserve energy is through “delayed implantation” of their embryos. The breeding season includes giving birth, nursing pups, and being impregnated again before going back into the water. But the new embryo will float around in the uterus for 3 or 4 months before attaching to the uterine wall, giving mom a chance to eat and build up her strength before sharing with junior.


6. Elephant seals can dive as deep as 5000 feet. The only mammals that can dive deeper are sperm whales and bottlenose whales. One way they accomplish this is by completely collapsing their lungs before diving, driving out all the air. This prevents nitrogen in the air from dissolving in their blood under high pressure, and coming out when they resurface causing the “bends”.


7. Elephant seals can stay under water for over an hour, then resurface for only a few minutes before diving again. They are able to do this by storing a higher concentration of oxygen in their blood and muscle tissue than other mammals.


8. Elephant seals have been observed eating stones before hauling out of the water for the breeding and molting seasons. When they return to the water, these stones come out the other end. It is believed this helps them fill their stomach while fasting.