Invertebrates
edyong | January 21, 2009If the sound of eating dung all your life doesn't sound that appealing to you, you're not alone. A beetle called Deltochilum valgum shares your distaste, which is quite surprising given that it's a dung beetle.
There are over 5,000 species of dung beetle and almost all of them feed mainly on the droppings of other animals (and more specifically, on the rich supply of bacteria they contain). D.valgum is the black sheep of the family, the only one that has abandoned the manure-based diet of its fellows and taken to hunting live meat for a living.
D.valgum lives in the lowland rainforests of…
edyong | January 17, 2009
Bee hives, with their regularly arranged honeycombs and permanently busy workers may seem like the picture of order. But look closer, and hives are often abuzz with secret codes, eavesdropping spies and deadly alliances.
African honeybees are victimised by the parasitic small hive beetle. The beetles move through beehives eating combs, stealing honey and generally making a mess. But at worst, they are a minor pest, for the bees have a way of dealing with them.
They imprison the intruders in the bowels of the hive and carefully remove any eggs they find. In turn, the beetle sometimes fools…
edyong | January 9, 2009To our ears, the buzz of a mosquito is intensely irritating and a sign of itchiness to come, but to theirs, it's a lover's serenade. The high-pitched drone of a female is a siren's song that attracts male mosquitoes. And a new study shows that when the two love-bugs meet, they perform a duet, matching each other's buzzing frequency with careful precision.
The female Aedes aegypti mosquito (the carrier of both dengue and yellow fever) beats her wings with a fundamental frequency of about 400Hz, producing a pitch just slightly lower than concert A. Males on the other hand, have a fundamental…
edyong | January 2, 2009It's not a good time for corals. Last year, a third of coral species went straight into the endangered lists after being assessed for the first time, and it looks like 2009 isn't going to bring any reprieves to the doom and gloom. In particular, a new study provides hard evidence that the mightiest of coral super-colonies - the Great Barrier Reef - is in trouble.
Like reefs across the world, the Great Barrier Reef faces many threats, including pollution, physical destruction, predatory starfish and perhaps most importantly, the many effects of climate change. Glenn De'ath and colleagues from…
edyong | January 1, 2009The mosquito Aedes aegypti sucks the blood of people from all over the tropics, and exchanges it for the virus that causes dengue fever - a disease that afflicts 40 million people every year. The mosquito has proven to be a tough adversary and efforts to drive it from urban settings have generally failed in the long-term. So how do you fight such an accomplished parasite? Simple - use a better parasite. In fact, try the most successful one in the world, a bacterium called Wolbachia.
Wolbachia's success rests on two traits. First, it targets the most diverse group of animals on the planet,…
edyong | December 28, 2008Solar power is a relatively new development for humans but, of course, many living things have been exploiting the power of the sun for millions of years, through the process of photosynthesis. This ability is usually limited to plants, algae and bacteria, but one unique animal can do it too - the emerald green sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This remarkable creature steals the genes and photosynthetic factories of a type of algae that it eats (Vaucheria littorea), so that it can independently draw energy from the sun. Through genetic thievery, it has become a solar-powered animal and a…
clock | December 23, 2008In National Geographic:
A new investigation into the tangled sex lives of deep-sea squid has uncovered a range of bizarre mating techniques. The cephalopods' intimate encounters include cutting holes into their partners for sex, swapping genders, and deploying flesh-burrowing sperm. These and other previously unknown reproductive strategies were documented in a survey of ten squid species living worldwide at depths of between 984 and 3,937 feet (300 and 1,200 meters). Study leader Henk-Jan Hoving, a Ph.D. student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, examined squid caught during…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, cockle, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Delphine Brabant, MNHN.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
A cockle's large, muscular foot juts through an opening in the mantle supporting its shell.
The cockle bends and straightens the foot to jump away from predators in its shallow-water ocean habitat off the island of Espiritu Santo,…
grrlscientist | December 16, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, sundial snail, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Annelise Fleddum, University of Oslo.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
Scientists sampled some 4,000 different mollusk species in Espiritu Santo. Mollusk expert Philippe Bouchet speculates that as many as 1,000 of these could be new species.
Among the finds: this sundial snail, already…
edyong | December 16, 2008The Humboldt squid is not an animal to mess with. It's two metres of bad-tempered top predator, wielding a large brain, a razor-sharp beak and ten tentacles bearing 2,000 sharp, toothed suckers. It cannibalises wounded squid, and it beats up Special Ops veterans. But over the next few years, the Humboldt faces a threat that even it may struggle against, one that threatens to deprive it of the very oxygen it needs to breathe - climate change.
The Humboldt squid (also known as the jumbo squid) lives "chronically on the edge of oxygen limitation". Through an unfortunate combination of…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, lobster, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Dr Tin-Yam Chan, University of Keelung.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
November 24, 2008--Even on tiny remote islands, scientists can find an impressive array of life.
During the Santo 2006 biodiversity survey in Vanuatu, 153 scientists from 20 countries fanned out across the remote South…
edyong | December 10, 2008Pity the small fish snagged by a sea anemone. Blundering into the waving tentacles, the fish is stung by hundreds of tiny harpoons shot out from stinging cells, each one loaded with potent venom. It is paralysed and moved towards the anemone's 'mouth', which lies in the centre of its tentacles and also doubles as its anus. The fish is swallowed and , but its ignominious fate doesn't end there. The anemone's internal cavity (which passes for its stomach) is also lined with thousands of stinging cells so that even after it's been swallowed, the fish continues to be stung.
The sea anemone is a…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008tags: Indonesian Mimetic Octopus, invertebrates, behavior, streaming video
This fascinating creature was discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the mimic octopus is the first known species to take on the characteristics of multiple species. This octopus is able to copy the physical likeness and movement of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. This animal is so intelligent that it is able to discern which dangerous sea creature to…
grrlscientist | November 25, 2008tags: Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History, collections, education, science, streaming video
This streaming video is by one of the scientists at the Smithsonian Institute. It shows pair formation, spermatophore transfer and reproductive anatomy of the jellyfish Carybdea sivickisi (Cubozoa: Carybdeidae) at the National Museum of Natural History, aka, the Smithsonian. I think they should have used Bolero as the music to accompany this video, what do you think? [6:35].
edyong | November 16, 2008
Many naturalists become so familiar with the animals they study that they can recognise individuals within a population using just their shapes and patterns. If that's too difficult, animals can be ringed or tagged. These tricks give scientists the invaluable ability to track the fates of individuals, but try using them on octopuses.
Recognising shape and pattern is impossible when your subject has the ability to change the texture and colour of its already pliant body on a whim. Injured individuals are distinctive enough, but only for a short while before their remarkable healing abilities…
edyong | November 15, 2008
Climate change is not just about surface warming and glacial melting. The carbon dioxide that human activity is pumping into the atmosphere also dissolves in the world's oceans, slowly increasing their acidity over time. And that spells trouble for corals.
Corals may seem like immobile rock, but these hard fortresses are home to soft-bodied animals. These creatures - the coral polyps - build their mighty reefs of calcium carbonate using carbonate ions drawn from the surrounding water. But as the water's pH levels fall, these ions become depleted and the corals start to run out of their…
edyong | November 9, 2008I'm an immensely big fan of cephalopods (octopus, squid and cuttlefish) and Sydney Aquarium gave me a really good ceph-fix.
This squid was a highlight of the trip. It was hauntingly beautiful, exuding both grace and intelligence. Anyone care to take a stab at the species?
Common octopus
edyong | November 5, 2008If you want to drive someone away, then throwing up on them is probably going to do the trick. But the caterpillars of the small mottled willow moth (aka the beet armyworm; Spodoptera exigua) take defensive vomiting to a whole new level. Their puke is both detergent and chemical weapon; its goal is not to cause revulsion but to break through the waterproof layer that its predators find so essential.
Willow moths are attacked by a variety of predatory ants. To study their defences, Rostas and Blassmann reared several caterpillars and exposed them to the European fire ant (Myrmica rubra).…
clock | November 2, 2008The list is now final. Here are the top 13:
#13 Deep-sea corals
#12: Yeti Crab
#11 Venus's Flower Basket
#10: Echinothuriid Sea Urchins
#9: Bathynomus, the GIANT ISOPOD!!!!
#8 Red Lure Jellyfish
#7 Predatory Tunicates
#6: Giant Sea Spiders
#5 Barreleye Fish
#4 Gold-Footed or Scaly Foot Snail
#3 Flesh Eating Sponges
#2: Bone-Devouring Zombie Worms from Hell
#1 Vampire Squid
grrlscientist | October 26, 2008tags: spider eats bird, golden orb spider, chestnut-breasted Mannikin, birds, avian, WTF, wow
Golden Orb Spider eats a chestnut-breasted Mannikin in Australian garden.
Image and story: Daily Mail.
This picture and story is so creepy that it makes my skin crawl to see this at the top of my blog. But it's also very strange -- the stuff of nightmares!! -- so I had to share it with you. If you are an arachnophobe, as I am, this will defintely give you nightmares. But if you are insatiably curious about the natural world, as I am, follow the link for the story and for more gruesome images --…