Readers’ wildlife photos

One generous contributor has come forward with some wildlife photos: mathematician Abby Thompson from UC Davis. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

This is a grab-bag of photos from Northern California from the summer (with one exception).

Cervus canadensis nannodes. A particularly contented Tule elk from the Point Reyes preserve:

Cornu aspersum (garden snail)- As a gardener I abhor them but looked at closely they are beautiful. They were introduced to California in the 1850s to be made into escargot, and now plague gardeners up and down the state:

Brodiaea terrestris from Point Reyes:

Once the extreme tides of the summer pass and there are no “good” low tides, I start looking through a microscope at bits of riffraff collected from the beach. It’s astonishing how many different creatures can live in a cubic inch of washed-up kelp holdfast.

Thetis vagina (twin-sailed salp). One of the seemingly endless types of blobby transparent things drifting around the ocean. Lying on the sand it looks like a scrap of Saran Wrap. Once revived in some sea water and under magnification the ghostly internal structure appears.    From google AI:  “Despite their jelly-like look, salps belong to the subphylum Tunicata (sea squirts), making them chordates that are evolutionarily more closely related to humans and vertebrates than to actual jellyfish.”  Cousins!

Phragmatopoma californica (California sandcastle worm). The worm is the curly orange thing on the left, which connects to the pink tentacles on the right underneath the structure with purple flecks, which is all that’s left of the tube the worm calls home (it’s ok, they can rebuild):

Close up showing the worm’s operculum – the “lid” of the tube, which the worm pulls down to close off the top of the tube when it retreats inside. I’ve posted a picture of this species before; my excuse is that this one’s tube, usually just made of sand,  has an interesting feature:

A close-up of the tube remnants, showing some Foraminifera, amazing 1-celled organisms.   The white ones in the center that look kind-of like a snail shell are Haynesina depressula (thanks inaturalist expert!) and there are several other types in there, harder to pick out.    I think the purple bits are pieces of sea urchin spines.     An artistic sandcastle worm!:

Genus Elphidium– another foram. This one was tangled in a shred of bryozoan.  It’s hard for me to believe this is a single cell, but I guess life is complicated:

Class Ostracoda – the things with little white dots. These are tiny crustaceans, mere specks.  There’s a foram in this photo, too:

Another ostracod- from 2025, not a great photo, included because it’s the first ostracod I ever saw. At first I thought I was looking at an infant mussel.    Then it sprouted legs and started running around like a crazy cartoon mussel. Quite a shock:

Genus Corambe (nudibranch, a baby), surrounded by its bryozoan prey. I think this ID is correct- its coloration is not typical of the genus. The nudibranch is so small that it looks slightly like it’s going to be attacked by the bryozoa, rather than vice-versa:

Sunset over the water:

Most photos taken with an iPhone precariously clamped to the eyepiece of an antique microscope.