petnoyer | June 2, 2008
A placoderm fossil called "mother fish" has been recovered from Gogo, an ancient coral reef site off the Kimberley coast of Northwest Australia. The fossil was recovered with embryo and umbilical cord still attached, providing evidence of live birth and sex with penetration in the Middle Paleozoic Era, 200 million years before it was ever thought possible. This remarkable finding shows that egg-laying and live-birth evolved together, rather than sequentially.
The tail-first birthing process was probably similar to that of some species of sharks and rays living today, says the study,…
cmcclain | June 2, 2008Beware when you go on tropical holiday. Species richness of bacteria is higher in those waters. For many organisms on land (birds, mammals, snails, plants, insects, and more) diversity increases as one progresses toward the equator. For many marine groups, snails for example, the same patterns applies. This is referred to often as the LSDG or the latitudinal species diversity gradient.
What drives this pattern? The hypotheses are numerous but typically the two favorites are primary productivity and temperature. On one hand a bigger pie allows for more slices. On the other hand…
kevin z | June 1, 2008"Epsilonproteobacteria, it turns out, are one of the predominant groups of extremophiles in marine systems. In one environmental DNA sample taken from a hydrothermal vent, Epsilonproteobacteria represented nearly 50% of the inferred diversity (Sogin et al., 2006)."
Christopher Taylor, the curator of the Catalogue of Organisms (a regular read of mine), has an interesting post on Epsilonproteobacteria. I would just like to add that even the hydrothermal vent chemoautotrophic snail Alviniconcha hessleri contains Epsilonproteobacteria in its gills. Curiously, this has so far only been found in…
cmcclain | June 1, 2008If you read Blogfish, MBSL&S, and DSN, I think you see that Rick, Mark, and I are not advocating a complete ban on eating seafood. To the contrary seafood tastes good, especially with lemon and butter, and tastes even better if harvested sustainably.
It is no surprise that the recent Cooking for Solutions event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium dedicated a session entirely to the Big 3. Rick Moonen, chef for rm seafood in Las Vegas and author of Fish Without a Doubt, noted that 60,000 lbs of shrimp are consumed daily in Sin City alone. However, eating bluefin tuna is like scarfing down…
cmcclain | May 29, 2008
I am a big fan of Slinkachu out of London. The art is best described by the subtitle of the project itself "A Tiny Street Art Project...little hand painted people left in London to fend for themselves." Visit the blog to see more.
kevin z | May 29, 2008I really love that quote from Alex Wild, by the way.
Brian Fisher (my former Evolution T.A. from ye ole UC-Davis days) and Alex Smith make open access history by publishing a taxonomic paper in PLoS ONE. It doesn't matter that this paper is about ants, not deep sea ants either like those discovered from whale falls above. I mean really, everyone knows they are just derived crustaceans anyways, by extension they are honorary deep sea taxa. Some amazing blogger already discussed the paper anyways.
This is a huge step forward for taxonomy and PLoS ONE made the right decision to dive into…
cmcclain | May 29, 2008
8ft and 1 inch is the length of what is thought to be the largest fish ever line-caught fish. The massive halibut was caught by an angler in Norway. To bad Atlantic Halibut is on the Seafood Watch avoid list. Along with other Atlantic flatfish, halibut are still in decline. Moreover, the fishery often uses bottom trawling. The good news is you can eat Pacific Halibut as long as it is not gill-netted.
cmcclain | May 28, 2008
Here's a quiz for you kids. Which of the habitats above possesses the most microbes? A. Fresh Volcanic Basalt on the seafloor, B. Sargasso Sea Water, or C. Farm Soil
A recent study by led by Santelli in Nature provides an answer that may surprise you. It turns out at A and C are the right answer.We demonstrate that prokaryotic cell abundances on seafloor-exposed basalts are 3-4 orders of magnitude greater than in overlying deep sea water. Phylogenetic analyses of basaltic lavas from the East Pacific Rise (96 N) and around Hawaii reveal that the basalt-hosted biosphere harbours high…
kevin z | May 28, 2008Last night I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Chad Orzel, who just so happens to blog right here on SEED ScienceBlogs at Uncertain Principles. Chad is a physics professor at Union College and blogs on everything physics! He was in merry ole Penn State for a conference so RPM, who blogs at evolgen and is one floor above me, Prof. Steve Steve and I took Chad out for a night on the town. Copious rounds of beer (when their draft menu wasn't lying to us) were consumed an rambunctious conversations on string theory, blogging, publishing and science in general were conducted. Thanks for stopping by…
cmcclain | May 27, 2008Via Kevin's Other Blog, which I thought we had assimilated, I see that Te Papa has made the lectures from the Colossal Squid event earlier this month available.
Dr. Steve O'Shea (asx)
Dr. Eric Warrant and Dr. Dan-Eric Nilsson (asx)
Dr. O'Shea on Science Express (mp3)
The last hours of the webcast from the squid dissection
cmcclain | May 27, 2008
Because of my previous trumpeting many of you may believe I scoff at anything non-mollusca. Untrue! I say! Indeed, I am friend of all invertebrate. My favorite books on my shelf is Barnes and Brusca & Brusca.
Just to prove I love all those squishy, squiggly, and slimey, I provide a link to the Sea Cucumber Expedition Blog (hat tip Jeff Ives). Tim Werner from the New England Aquarium is on a three week biodiversity trip to Madagascar. After your done loathing Tim for this, you should check out all of his recent discoveries inlcuding six foot sea cucumbers, two-foot sea stars, and "…
cmcclain | May 26, 2008
...just kidding. The latest Giant Squid catch measures in at 6m and 230kg. Bert Tober's trawler, Zeehan, was approximately 40km off the coast of Portland, Australia when it netted the monster on Sunday at a depth of 500m. Apparently, it took ten men to put the squid in the freezer.
kevin z | May 25, 2008
Congratulations to the Phoenix landing team for an absolutely best-scenario landing! I tuned in for the landing on NASA TV online. Seeing all the tension and excitement at Mission Control got me positively bouncing in my desk chair. I was just amazed that everything happened exactly how it should. We now have 3 active robots on Mars providing us scientific data. Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine this? Additionally, this was the first propulsion landing since the Viking lander, over 30 years ago.
cmcclain | May 25, 2008One of most dynamic people I met at Cooking For Solutions was Paul Johnson who is the founder and president of the Monterey Fish Market. He is former chef, author of two books, and sets on the advisory board for the Seafood Watch Program. I like Paul most for his passion and no nonsense way of telling it like it is.
Paul mentioned during the panel discussion that he viewed the commercial extinction of many species directly related to the loss of small-boat fishing. In case your unaware, commercial fishing is no longer dominated by the "mom & pop" fishers but rather commercial factory…
cmcclain | May 25, 2008A week ago I had the oppurtunity to attend the Cooking For Solutions Event held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The discussions Thursday were insightful and provided much to contemplate. Over the next few weeks, as I find time, I will post on numerous topics that arose at the event.
One of the interesting concepts, and one that I was unfamiliar with, was 'green washing'. We are familiar with the act even if we do not know it by name. It was discussed by Gene Kahn, currently VP and Global Sustainability Officer for General MIlls. He is a pioneer of the organic food and farming movement…
kevin z | May 23, 2008One of my favorite group of musicians, known as MMW, released their next big idea - Viva la Evolution. This is an innovative concert/record idea. First they will write the songs, then tour instead of making a CD. During their tour they will use that opportunity to fine tune their notes and experiment with different audiences. They will conduct 3 tours resulting in 3 separate albums, each with unique material. Hence, their music will evolve throughout this summer. This may even be a cooler idea than their funky children's CD Let's Go Everywhere (with such great songs like "Pirates Don't Take…
kevin z | May 23, 2008Seriously, who wouldn't want to hug the wearer of this totally awesome sucker-free shirt?
Get yours at Snorg Tees today!
cmcclain | May 22, 2008
I see that some are still trying to claim echinoderms are cooler. I see the evil order now even has their own blog. Thankfully we still have a tiny little magazine you might have heard of-National Geographic. Photographer David Doubilet has a series on nudibranchs with some of the best photography of any organism ever. The shot above Halgerda batangas is my favorite. Just keep in mind that molluscs lost their shells in at least three independent evolutionary events (and some of these may also represent multiple trajectories): octopods & squids, land slugs, and sea slugs. More…