Courtship & Parenting Tips from the Male Superb Fairy-Wren (Malurus cyaneus)

Native to the scrubland fringes of Australia’s eucalypt woodlands, superb fairy-wrens spend most of their days hunting grasshoppers or snuggling on low-hanging branches in bundles of 2… 3… sometimes 5. Lavishly-feathered, “rampantly promiscuous,” and a common visitor of children’s parks, they’ve been ballyhooed by The Guardian as Australia’s favorite bird. Despite their cotton-ball size, these flamboyant daredevil passerines pack a suit of evolutionary aces up their tail feathers, especially when it comes to courtship!

1. Keep in mind that your vibrant plumage attracts predators

3 seasons of the year, fairy-wrens don the drab, downy coloration of a miniature koala, but come the next molt, all bets and feathers are off. With dazzling sapphire cheek plumes and a midnight-blue jabbot, the breeding plumage of the male superb fairy-wren is a spectacle of sexual selection. But while gleaming like a crown jewel captivates females, it’s also a flashy candy wrapper to predators. Being sexy is dangerous.

Male fairy-wrens are cognizant and even cautious of this (McQueen, Naimo, Teunissen et. al. 2017). In their 2017 paper, “Bright Birds are Cautious: Seasonally Conspicuous Plumage Prompts Risk Avoidance By Male Superb Fairy-Wrens,” an Australian research team details differences in antipredator responses between superb fairy-wrens of different plumage types. Broadcasting the species’s alarm calls to a population in Lysterfield Park, Australia, they found that blue males were 50% less likely to forage on open ground, took over twice as long to reemerge from cover, and showed a stronger immediate response to predator alarm calls (2017). They propose that breeding fairy-wren males are well aware of their conspicuous plumage and make behavioral adjustments accordingly to avoid predation, and that flock members can benefit from the heightened vigilance of these blue males, either as an early warning system or as a bright decoy (2017).

2. When in doubt, bring her flowers

Because being fabulous ain’t enough to turn up the charm, the superb fairy-wren suitor will bequeath females with a single yellow flower petal, perhaps to accentuate his scintillating blue-black plumage. However, despite the temptingly-anthropomorphic similarities, petal-bearing is no diamond-ring proposal – more like a booty call!

Superb fairy-wrens have the highest rate of “extra-pair fertilization” (AKA cheating) out of any bird species (Double, Cockburn 2000). Though superb fairy-wren flocks are headed by an older, territorial “primary” male that is socially bonded to a single female, cheating is rampant, and a whopping 95% of their broods contain offspring sired by a different father (Mulder, 1997; Mulder, Dunn, Cockburn et. al.  1994). An observation-based study by Raoul A. Mulder, “Extra-group Courtship Displays and Other Reproductive Tactics of Superb Fairy-wrens,” determined that in its 375 observations of fairy-wren courtship displays, petal bearing was performed “exclusively (97%) for extra-group females during excursions into neighbouring territories by lone males, and appears to have evolved specifically for the purpose of soliciting future extra-pair fertilizations” (1997).

3. Evolve Extra-Fancy Sperm

Polygamy’s rough – to maximize reproductive success, individuals of promiscuous species not only have to tirelessly woo as many partners as possible, but also have to deal with sexual selection post-copulation – rife with chemical manipulation, copulatory inhibitors, competitive sperm morphology, hostile pH fluctuations, and intersexual conflict, fertilization is a gametic war zone. Mating multiple times is great, but how does an organism ensure that each of its efforts successfully produced offspring?

Sometimes, it’s a numbers game. Fairy-wrens are known for their copious sperm loads – Malurus splendens, a close cousin to the superb fairy-wren, produces over 8.3 billion sperm per ejaculate (In comparison, a dose of human ejaculate only contains around 280 million) (Tuttle, Pruett-Jones, Webster 1996)!

Alongside gamete quantity, sperm variation and competition becomes especially intense amongst superb fairy-wrens, where the reproductive success of different paternal strategies vary with sperm morphology (Calhim, Double, Margraf et. al. 2011).

In quantifying the relationship between head : flagellum ratio and reproductive success in this species, Calhim, Double, Margraf et. al. mist-netted, banded, and non-invasively sampled sperm from M. cyaneus males from different reproductive stages in their life history. After observing and determining parentage of the offspring, the team calculated intrapair success, measured as the number of offspring the male sired for his social mate, as well as extrapair or “cuckolding” success, “measured as the lifetime number of illegitimate offspring that survived to four weeks after fledgling” (2011). Their study, “Maintenance of Sperm Variation in a Highly Promiscuous Wild Bird,” details that intrapair success was strongly associated with a longer flagellum and relatively shorter head, while a short flagellum and a relatively large head was associated with better extrapair success (2011).

4. Help your mate teach your chicks a song to distinguish them from brood parasites.

Even after their eggs are laid and their brilliant feathers dust over, fairy-wren parents must still be on high alert: both for predators, and for the insidious Horsfield’s bronze cuckoo, who lurks around poorly-guarded nests. Given the opportunity, the female cuckoo will descend, roll one of the wrens’ eggs out of the nest, and replace it with one that looks deceptively similar – pink, with a ring of dark speckles at its base. Securely tucked within the lofty grass walls of the nest, superb fairy-wren parents would hardly be able to tell the difference, so what they do instead is sing a secret passcode to their eggs (Colombelli-Ne´grel, Hauber, Robertson et. al. 2012).

9-10 days before the brood hatches, superb fairy-wren mothers titter a fast, high-frequency trill ranging from 5782.8-11,011,2 ± 250.0 Hz, which her chicks embryonically learn as they develop within their eggs (2012). Within every incubation call is a signature sequence that is unique to each female – the hatchlings who can sing their mother’s fingerprint best are the ones who get fed, and the hatchlings that can’t imitate her calls are abandoned or discarded (2012). The females communicate this to their mates, too, so that they could aid in distinguishing their chicks (2012). The eggs hatch after 15 days, and as the cuckoos start laying 13 days into the fairy-wrens’ incubation period, their foreign chicks get less time to memorize their foster mother’s calls, and thus are most likely to be pushed or starved out of the nest (2012). The joint team of psychology and zoology researchers who reported these findings in their paper, “Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings,” speculate that this co-evolutionary arms race between superb fairy-wrens and their brood parasites could intensify selective pressures for finer-tuned acoustic learning in both species’s offspring (2012).

All in all, superb fairy-wrens are frickin’ awesome! Ever flitting, singing, and glittering in the Aussie sun, these avian divas are a star 3.4 billion years in the making. Their richly-textured social lives have established new extremes in our study of coevolution, intersexual conflict, postcopulatory selection, and avian social psychology, and that’s barely the beginning of the profound body of research that needs to be done on this species. It just goes to show that even the tiniest species have eons to reveal about the diversity of life on Earth, and our study of evolution will never be complete without them!

SOURCES:

Colombelli-Ne´grel, D. Hauber, M. E. Robertson, J. et. al. (2012).

Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings. Current Biology, 22: 2155–2160.

Mulder, R. A. Dunn, P. O. Cockburn, A. et. al. (1994). Helpers liberate female fairy-wrens from constraints on extra-pair mate choice. Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 255(1344): 223-229.

Tuttle, E. M. Pruett-Jones, S. Webster, M. S. (1996). Cloacal protuberances and extreme sperm production in Australian fairy-wrens. Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 263(1375): 1359-1364.

Calhim S, Double MC, Margraf N, Birkhead TR, Cockburn A (2011) Maintenance of Sperm Variation in a Highly Promiscuous Wild Bird. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0028809

Mulder, R. A. (1997). Extra-group Courtship Displays and Other Reproductive Tactics of Superb Fairy-wrens. Australian Journal of Zoology, 45(2) 131 - 143.

McQueen, A. Naimo, A. C. Teunissen, N. et. al. (2017). Bright Birds are Cautious: Seasonally Conspicuous Plumage Prompts Risk Avoidance By Male Superb Fairy-Wrens. Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 284(1857).

Double, M. Cockburn, A. (2000). Pre–Dawn Infidelity: Females Control Extra-Pair Mating in Superb Fairy–Wrens. Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 267(1442): 465-470.

Eye Morphology: Aquatic vs. Terrestrial

AQUATIC EYES

Underwater vision undergoes some immense evolutionary pressures: turbidity, spectrum of light penetration with depth, temperature, pressure gradients, and the presence of bioluminescence, amongst others (Anca-Narcisa, Ozana-Maria, Cuza et. al 2015). Fittingly, we see a diverse array of eye morphologies underwater, though a common feature amongst all these eyes is that the corneas lie relatively flat – since the refractive index of the surrounding water and the fluid inside the eye are pretty much equivalent, there’s no need for a highly refractive cornea (some aquatic organisms don’t even have one) (2015). Instead, the lens wields the brunt of the focusing power (2015). Eye placement, shape, and size are a variable of the amount of light at a given depth (2015).

Surface fish, dolphins, shrimp, and octopi have globose eyes and high-res vision – epipelagic eyes, which have adapted to high levels of exposure, often contain different screening pigments that filter light (Evans, Acosta, Bolstad 2015; see also Frank, Porter 2009).

Meanwhile, in the mesopelagic, we start seeing a reduced visible spectrum of downwelling celestial light. Telescopic eyes start occurring at deeper depths where maximizing exposure of light on the retina becomes more favorable than flexible focusing. Screening pigments are usually absent in these deeper forms, sacrificing resolution for higher sensitivity. Most mesopelagic eyes are rod-cell dominated, as being able to distinguish different visible frequencies is less advantageous in such a dark environment. Whatever cone cells are present are often for viewing the blue light of bioluminescence. 

At even deeper depths, the eyes are usually further reduced or nonexistent. 

FIG.1– teleost eyes of a yellowfin tuna. Notice the spherical lens, double-layered cornea (outer layer formed by skin), and retractor lentis muscle, which allows for accommodative lens movement (Andison, Sivak 1994). Re-drawn from Walls 1942. 

FIG.2– scallop eyes! The “mirror” layer in the eye is made up of highly-reflective guanine crystals that concentrate light into 2 layers of the retina, allowing for complex albeit small-scale imaging (Palmer et. al. 2017). Re-drawn from Speiser et. al. 2011. 

FIG.3– crystalline eyes of the mantis shrimp. Re-drawn from Physiologizing 2014. 

FIG.4– Sepia cuttlefish eye, which has convergently evolved a shape similar to human eyes (Yoshida et. al 2014). Re-drawn from Ch. 16.1 – Mollusca, ©️The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 

FIG.5– Telescopic eye of a hatchetfish Argyropelecus aculeatus, a bathypelagic fish. Re-drawn from Warrant, Lockett 2004. 

FIG.6– Amongst the jawless fish, lampreys have surprisingly complex eyes, possessing a 3-layered retina and a melanin-pigmented choroid (Dubielzig 2009). Re-drawn from Dubielzig 2009.

FIG.7– Polychaete worm eyes. Re-drawn from Duke-Elder 1958. 

FIG.8– eyes of a mature sturgeonfish; the lens is secured by 2 cartilaginous papillae, but has no observable means of accommodative focus (Dubielzig 2009). Re-drawn from Dubielzig 2009.

TERRESTRIAL EYES

The first terrestrial ocular systems were presented with unique challenges. On land, the refractive index of the aqueous humor is now greater than that of the surrounding air, meaning that our first amphibious ancestors probably experienced severe nearsightedness when they first clambered to shore. Consequently, selection for strong curvature in the cornea became favorable as it accommodated for refractive differences inside and outside the eye (Anca-Narcisa, Ozana-Maria, Cuza et. al 2015). Now, focusing power becomes an interplay between both cornea and lens (2015).

Terrestrial eyes are predominantly spherical, though telescopic forms do exist amongst certain nocturnal organisms (2015).

FIG.1– eye of the oriental garden lizard Calotes versicolor. Re-drawn from Young 1981. 

FIG.2– elongated, tubular eye of an owl (upper) as well as a chicken eye (lower) for comparison – despite the difference in form, both eyes contain pecten, a comblike protrusion of blood vessels that maintains pH in the vitreous humor and nourishes the retina – these are a common feature of most bird eyes (Brach 1977). Re-drawn from Martin 2017. 

FIG.3– parts of an insect’s compound eye. Re-drawn from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 

FIG.4– a frog eye. Re-drawn from Mangold 1931.

FIG.5– a cat’s eye. Re-drawn from Gelatt 2019.


I'll end with some questions I'm planning to look into!

• What's with all the protruding tissue we see in birds and reptiles? Does it hinder light refraction onto the retina in any way?

• Does that ectodermal conus in the reptilian eye have a function? What selective advantages have shaped it this way? (Also, it is a convergent characteristic to pecten, or are the two related somehow...?)

• How many times have fovea evolved independently?

• What's with those certain fish species that can perceive UV light? What evolutionary advantages would this provide underwater?

• What kind of selective pressures drove the evolution of a 3-layered retina in lamprey eyesight? Are there other examples of parasites with good eyes, or is the lamprey a freak exception?

• Why are polychaete eyes shaped like ear endoscopes? And why are sturgeon eyes shaped like sad-looking pastries?

• Eye vs. brain size – positive or negative correlation? Would we get different answers for highly-visual vs. less-visually oriented clades?

• Compound eyes come in a huge variety of patterns, colors, lusters, facet shapes. What environmental factors/niche characteristics influence each quality?

• Determinants of pupil shape?

• When is it more advantageous to have a greater number of eyes rather than eyes that are larger/have better visual acuity and/or range of vision?

SOURCES

Dubielzig, D. (2009). A Survey of Ocular Anatomy and Pathology of Vertebrate Species [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/pbs/dubielzig/pages/coplow/PowerPoints/Wildlife_Dz_Worksh_08.pdf
Warrant, E. Lockett, N. A. (2004). Vision in the Deep Sea. Biological Reviews 79(3):671-712.

Anca-Narcisa, N. Ozana-Maria, P. (2015). “Aquatic” vs. “Terrestrial” Eye Design – A Functional Ecomorphological Approach. Biologie animală, 61: 101-114.

Wilk, L. (2009). Mantis Shrimp Eye Structure and Function, Semantic Scholar. 1-6.

Duke-Elder, S. (1958). System of Opthalmology: The Eye in Evolution. St. Louis, Missouri: C. V. Mosby Company.

Martin, G. R. (2017). What Drives Bird Vision? Bill Control and Predator Detection Overshadow Flight. Frontiers in Neuroscience 1(11):619.

Young, J. Z. (1981). The Life of Vertebrates. Oxford, England: Clarendon.

Gelatt, K. N. (2019). Eye Structure and Function in Cats. Retrieved from https://www.merckvetmanual.com/cat-owners/eye-disorders-of-cats/eye-structure-and-function-in-cats

Fig. 3. Composite eye and ommatidies of an insect [scientific diagram]. From Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Retrieved from https://passion-entomologie.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/compound_eye.jpg

Brach, V. (1977). The Functional Significance of the Avian Pecten: A Review. The Condor 79:321-327.

Palmer, B. A. Taylor, G. J. Brumfeld, V. (2017). The Image-Forming Mirror in the Eye of the Scallop. Science. 358(6367): 1172-1175.

Andison, M. E. Sivak, J. G. (1994). The functional morphology of the retractor lentis muscle of a teleost fish, Astronotus ocellatus. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 1994, 72(11): 1880-1886.

Yoshida, M. Yura, K. Ogura, A. (2014). Cephalopod eye evolution was modulated by the acquisition of Pax-6 splicing variants. Nature, 4 : 4256.

Evans, A. B. Acosta, M. L. (2015). Bolstad, K. S. Retinal Development and Ommin Pigment in the Cranchiid Squid Teuthowenia pellucida (Cephalopoda: Oegopsida). PLOS One, 10(5): 1-11.

Frank, T. Porter, M. (2009). Spectral sensitivity, visual pigments and screening pigments in two life history stages of the ontogenetic migrator Gnathophausia ingens. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 89(1): 119-129.

Bird Journal - Brown Pelicans

A flock dozing off at Elkhorn Slough – July 23, 2017. Monterey Bay, CA

Brown pelicans are the lumbering Paul Bunyans of the seabird world. The snaking arcs of their necks look almost prehistoric, and indeed, the earliest known pelican, dating back to over 30 million years ago, exhibits little to no change in fundamental morphology (Louchart, Tourment, Carrier 2011)! 

As exclusively-oceanic predators, they have a bunch of cool sea-faring adaptations: specialized glands that allow them to drink salt water (Schmidt-Nielsen, Fange 1958), air sacs under their skin for added buoyancy (US Fish and Wildlife Service 2009), as well as a hunting technique that is novel amongst other Pelecaniids. 

The brown pelican is unique in that it’s the only plunge-diving pelican species in existence (2009). While most others of its clade will scoop at fish while sitting at the water’s surface, brown pelicans dive-bomb the sea like war jets, tucking their wings behind them in one deadly thrust. The timing of this part is crucial. If they don’t corkscrew to the right by just the right amount, they could fatally injure their trachea and esophagus. 

Assuming all goes well underwater, they flap their gums open. Their gular pouch balloons out like a 3-gallon net, ensnaring the hapless fish between their jaws: anchovies, sardines, herring, sheepshead, mullet, pigfish… Occasionally, they’ve even been seen gulping down crustaceans (2009). 

These ambush strategies have proven fruitful in chasing the ever-fast and finicky epipelagic fish, but plummeting from heights of 60 ~ 70 feet is not a skill they are born with (2009). Before maturing into sleek, bow-winged adults, pelican youngsters look something like this: 

It’s like an overcooked marshmallow tried to grow feathers (a 3-5 month old juvenile) – July 3, 2017. San Francisco, CA.

These little ones, while cute, are honestly terrible at fishing. I got the chance to see this particular one attempt a dive, during which it lost balance and smacked against the water in an explosive belly-flop! A 1969 paper, “Age and Hunting Success in the Brown Pelican (Pelicanus occidentalis)” by Gordon H. Orians, attests that plunge-diving is a technique that takes years to develop. Using a paired t-test of nearly 2000 observations off the coast of Playas del Coco, Costa Rica, Orians compared the catch rates amongst different life stages of brown pelicans, and found significant evidence that the learning period for the juvenile birds takes at least 18 months to 2 years (1969). Orians remarks that this phenomenon, if widespread, could in part explain why brown pelicans, as do many sea-faring bird species, exhibit an unusually delayed maturation (1969) – while juvenile brown pelicans fully fledge at about 3-5 months of age, they don’t reach sexual maturity until they’re about 3 years old (US Fish and Wildlife Service 2009). 

Once they hit breeding age, their chocolatey manes melt away. Their lores and bill area flush with color, and their eyes metamorphose from deep brown to salty-pale. 

As social birds, adult pelicans can often be seen soaring together in V-formation over the beaches of North and South America. There are lots of them diving off Santa Barbara and especially IV, so next time you see one of these bombardiering specialists, try and see if you could pick out the steps in its technique! 

SOURCES:

Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2009). Brown Pelican [Fact sheet]

Retrieved from

https://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2009/pdf/brown_pelicanfactsheet09.pdf

Louchart, A. Tourment, N. Carrier, J. 2011. The earliest known pelican reveals 30 million years of evolutionary stasis in beak morphology. Journal of Ornithology, 152(1): 15-20. 

Orians, G. H. 1969. Age and Hunting Success in the Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). Animal Behavior, 17: 316-219. 

Schmidt-Nielsen, K. Fange, R. 1958. The Function of the Salt Gland in the Brown Pelican. The Auk, 75(3): 282-289. 

Big dino

Was there a general trend towards larger size in dinosaurs, and if so why?

In addition to this question, why were some dinosaurs massive and what allowed them to reach such huge sizes.

For the answers to all these questions and more check out Rise of dinosaurs reveals major body-size transitions are driven by passive processes of trait evolution in this months Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

There's also a commentary on the DiscoveryNews website.

Benson and colleagues Roland Sookias and Richard Butler analyzed more than 400 species spanning the Late Permian to Middle Jurassic periods. The animals' pattern of growth during 100 million years supports a theory called "passive diffusion." This just means that various evolutionary lineages did a bunch of different things, from growing larger to growing smaller.
The findings counter a theory known as "Cope's rule," which claims that some groups, such as dinosaurs, tended to always evolve bigger bodies over time.
...
"Several aspects of dinosaurian biology may have allowed them to obtain larger maximum sizes than any other land animals," Benson said.
"For example, in many dinosaurs, parts of the skeleton contained air, and we think they had an efficient bird-like lung. These features helped them to support their weight on land more easily, and made their respiration and heat exchange more effective than in mammals."

Tiny terror

I don't think this story would have been picked up by the press quite as much as it has been if they hadn't included some adorable photos of grumpy looking tiny chameleons. The actual paper is in PLoS ONE this week. The photos are all over the interwebs

Rivaling the World's Smallest Reptiles: Discovery of Miniaturized and Microendemic New Species of Leaf Chameleons (Brookesia) from Northern Madagascar

Tidepool App

This looks very cool, and its free!

Make exploring the beach a fun and educational experience and learn about the creatures that inhabit this dynamic and important ecosystem.

It's one thing to find an urchin or a fish.

It's more fun to learn that a red urchin can live for 100 years, or that the fish you've just dicovered is a baby Opaleye that can breathe air when young!

Search a database containing: photos, common and scientific names, taxonomy, description, habitat, eats and eaten by, fun facts, frequently asked questions, and more.

This iPhone app works on an iPad too! And, is a great tool for teachers, naturalists, students, and anyone who is curious about tidepool life on the California coast.

Created by the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, UCSB Marine Science Institute, LiMPETS (Long-term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students), and volunteers from Citrix Systems, Inc. 

The App was also designed to raise awareness about the future Outreach Center for Teaching Ocean Science (OCTOS) which will increase ocean literacy by engaging visitors in scientific discovery (more at octos.ucsb.edu).

Search for Tidepools in the Apple Store and download using a wireless network as it is a fairly large file (186mb).

Screen shots and more info here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/california-tidepools/id497631839?mt=8

Very different but very cool

Two totally different critters I mentioned today. First up the slime mold.



and then the cephalopod - master of camouflage.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournaments Explain Ecological Diversity

Directly relevant to our discussion of ecological diversity, is this hot-off-the-press research co-authored by UCSB ecologist Jonathon Levine.

The mystery of biodiversity –– how thousands of similar species can coexist in a single ecosystem might best be understood as the result of a massive rock-paper-scissors tournament, a new study has revealed.

From the UCSB pub, "Coastlines":

According to classical ecology, when two species compete for the same resource, eventually the more successful species will win out while the other will go extinct. But that rule cannot explain systems such as the Amazon, where thousands of tree species occupy similar ecological niches.

The childhood game of rock-paper-scissors provides one solution to this puzzle, report researchers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Chicago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A mathematical model designed around the game's dynamics produced the potential for limitless biodiversity, and suggested some surprising new ecological rules. Read the article here.

The link to the original source, published in PNAS is here.

Museum event

Bruce forwarded this. It sounds like an interesting

The next Friends of the Santa Barbara Museum Library Lecture is Wednesday, May 11th at 7:00 PM. The evening will feature Curator of Malacology, Paul Valentich-Scott and Elizabeth Garfinkle, a San Roque High School student. Theirs is a unique research story. Read about it below.

Not just your everyday new species How does a small clam from deep water off Baja California end up being a local sensation with a Santa Barbara teenager? Collaborators Paul Valentich-Scott, Curator of Malacology, and Elizabeth Garfinkle, a junior at San Roque High School, will present their recently published research describing a new species of clam. The pair will discuss the initial discovery of the new bivalve and its surprising links to the past of central California.

Elizabeth is one of the few high school students globally who has described a new species. Her achievement has been chronicled in many local media outlets from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles. She took top honors at the 2011 Santa Barbara County Science Fair for this unique project. Come meet Paul and Elizabeth and learn more about the exciting journey that led to a new species being described in a zoology journal from New Zealand.

Admission is free but you need to make a reservation by e-mailing Terri Sheridan at tsheridan@sbnature2.org or (805) 682-4711 ext. 134

Speaking of ecosystems...

By combining 22 newly sequenced faecal metagenomes of individuals from four countries with previously published data sets, here we identify three robust clusters (referred to as enterotypes hereafter) that are not nation or continent specific.

"We found that the combination of microbes in the human intestine isn't random," says Peer Bork, who led the study at EMBL: "our gut flora can settle into three different types of community -- three different ecosystems, if you like."

Report at ScienceDaily and the paper, Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome, is published in nature this week.

Proteus

Kathy sent this on:

Chasing Haeckel - A documentary centered on Ernst Haeckel's drawings of radiolarians sets the unity of art and science in motion



Selections from the the film Proteus, a documentary concerning the life, work, and philosophy of Ernst Haeckel, a 19th century naturalist. The film tells of the man's character and influences while using his detailed engravings of Radiolaria, single celled marine organisms, to make animated progressions

All your fly base are belong to us

Just to clarify, there are over 1,000 species of endemic Drosophila (fruit flies) on the Hawaiian Islands. These are all thought to have descended from a single introduction 26 million years ago.

Over one hundred of these Drosophila species are members of the 'picture wing group'. The figure I showed in class just depicts the hypothesized dispersal events necessary to create the 112 members of the picture wing group. Although the picture wing species are quite distinct from each other in morphology, pigmentation, and behavior it is now known that this explosive adaptive radiation occurred with relatively little change in DNA sequence. These factors make the Hawaiian Drosophila an important model system for analysis of evolutionary processes at the species level.

Learn more at FlyBase - A Database of Wing Diversity in the Hawaiian Drosophila

Every second breath...

Well I could make fun of some parts of it but I won't because it's actually a pretty nice video. They get a lot across in 3 minutes and hopefully leave you more interested in the Census on Marine Life than you were when you started. Can we ask any more than that?

National Geographic Photos

Cool pictures of weird things that live in the ocean!
(Just for fun) :)

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/underwater-oddities/#/pacific-octopus-eye-grall_18495_600x450.jpg

Carcinonemertes kurisi

In case you didn't see the Nexus today:  New Nemertean Worm Species Named After UCSB Scientist


UCSB zoology professor Armand Kuris has received one of the greatest honors biologists can hope for — having a newly discovered species named after him.
Carcinonemertes kurisi, a species of ribbon worm, was first found and documented by Kuris and Patricia Sadeghian, one of his former students. Sadeghian wrote her Master’s thesis on the species in 2003 and then named the ribbon worm after Kuris in an October 2010 issue of the Journal of Natural History after producing a formal description of the worm.

City of gonads

And whilst we are on the subject of oversized gonads (if you missed the museum visit that will be intriguing) here is the newly discovered 'city of gonads' jellyfish. Only a few millimetres wide with a cluster of gonads on top the jellyfish was found in the River Derwent in Hobart, Tasmania.

The new species has been named Csiromedusa medeopolis, meaning "jellyfish from CSIRO" and "city of gonads" and is so different from other jellyfish that it has been placed into a new family.

Anaerobic metazoan

Sandwiched between 'Earliest known Led Zeppelin recording' and 'Evolutionary Psychology Bingo' on BoingBoing is A multicellular organism that lives without oxygen.

This is based on a paper in BMC Biology entitled The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions.

This is the first evidence of a metazoan life cycle that is spent entirely in permanently anoxic sediments. Our findings allow us also to conclude that these metazoans live under anoxic conditions through an obligate anaerobic metabolism that is similar to that demonstrated so far only for unicellular eukaryotes. The discovery of these life forms opens new perspectives for the study of metazoan life in habitats lacking molecular oxygen.

Squid friends

Although Blobby was often sad he always had his squid friends, the Glass Squid and the Piglet Squid, to cheer him up. How can you not be a biologist when such fabulous creatures exist?

Toco Toucan Tradeoff

A Toco Toucan at London Zoo.

I was doing some reading about Toucans. I confess I was never this enthusiastic as a student but these days I seem to be finding everything interesting. Anyway, I came across this curious conservation paper: Conservation puzzle: Endangered hyacinth macaw depends on its nest predator for reproduction.

In the Pantanal wetlands of Central Brazil, the endangered hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), the largest psitacid in the world, makes its nest almost exclusively in natural hollows found in the manduvi tree (Sterculia apetala). The recruitment of manduvis greatly depends on the seed dispersal services provided by the toco toucan (Ramphastos toco), responsible for 83.3% of the seed dispersal. The toco toucan, however, is responsible for about 53% of the preyed eggs, resulting in a case of conflicting ecological pressures in which the reproduction of the hyacinth macaw is indirectly dependent on the seed dispersal services of its nest predator.

Freaky frogfish

It's been a while since we had a crazy critter here - although we did see some bizarre plants on Saturday.

This new species of frogfish uses its leg like pectoral fins to crawl - that is when it isn't bouncing around like a rubber ball. See yesterdays University of Washington press release for information and some great photos and video.

Members of Histiophryne psychedelica, or H. psychedelica, don't so much swim as hop. Each time they strike the seafloor they use their fins to push off and they expel water from tiny gill openings on their sides to jet themselves forward. With tails curled tightly to one side --which surely limits their ability to steer -- they look like inflated rubber balls bouncing hither and thither.