Category: invertebrates

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 6, 2020 • 8:00 am

During the pandemonium surrounding the entry of Honey and Dorothy’s broods into Botany Pond at the beginning of May, reader David Campbell sent me some wildlife pictures. And, as sometimes happens, I forgot to put them in the “readers’ wildlife” folder. He reminded me, and, with apologies, here are some late photos. David’s captions are indented:

Descriptions follow.  The Cannon Spring photo [last one] is not the highest quality but the situation was so unique that I thought some of your readers would be interested.

Dog Puke Slime Mold (Fuligo septica) A plasmodial slime mold that frequently occurs on mulch around plants after heavy rains.  The gross factor made it a big hit with my students when it appeared in the ornamental plantings outside my classroom.  It has no odor.  I am waiting for someone to come up with a Hairball Slime Mold.

Sailfin Catfish, Pterygoplichthys sp. Photographed in Silver Glen Springs in the Ocala National Forest of Florida.  Sailfins are exotic invasives that I have seen in a lot of springs in the St. Johns River basin.  Two species of Pterygoplichthys are found in Florida and frequent hybridization makes identification to species difficult.  Sailfin catfish are edible but they are encased in a hard, bony armor so cleaning them is difficult.  Some people simply cook them “in the shell” and peel them apart.

Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus).  Blue crabs are anadromous, occurring in both fresh and salt water.  This one was photographed about 15 feet below the surface at the mouth of a freshwater spring in the Ocala National Forest.

Florida Gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus) Gars look intimidating but are not aggressive toward swimmers.  This meter long fish swam over to examine me and then went back under nearby overhanging vegetation to do what gar seem to spend most of their time doing, sitting motionless in the water column.

Green Fly Orchid (Epidendrum magnoliae).  A native epiphytic orchid that is found as far north as North Carolina.  Different plants bloom at different times of the year, sometimes as late as December in Florida.  The flowers are quite small and easily overlooked but worth the effort to find.

Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes).  Photographed in Arizona.  This is one of the smaller rattlesnakes and this individual was typically nervous and aggressive.  The right infrared sensing pit is visible forward of the eye.  Like many other pit vipers, sidewinders hunt at night and use infrared radiation from homeothermic prey in the final localization stage of hunting.

Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).  Two photos of a chrysalis, the pupa of this familiar butterfly.  These photo were taken three days after pupation.  The first photo was taken using conventional front lighting.  Clearly visible in the “skin” of the pupa are the outlines of wings, antenna, respiratory spiracles, and abdominal segmentation.  The second photo, taken during the same session, shows the chrysalis backlit.  Notice that the lower two thirds of the pupa is translucent with little or no visible structure.  Small clusters of cells are already organizing development of major butterfly organs and tissues from the products of broken down larval tissues.

Unicorn Caterpillar Moth (Schizura unicornis).  This is one of the more unusual Notodontidae caterpillars and was found feeding on an antique rose in the garden.  I moved it to a less valuable Cherokee rose where it continued feeding.  The adult is a nondescript little moth with a 25-35 cm wingspan.

Cannon Springs, Ocklawaha River, Florida.  This is a grab shot of something that is only visible for a month or two every three to four years.  Back in the 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers conceived and began construction on a barge canal connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean, cutting across the Florida peninsula around the same latitude as Ocala.  One of the most beautiful rivers in Florida, the Ocklawaha was dammed to provide a wider and deeper channel for barges using the canal.  The resulting reservoir covered more than a dozen freshwater springs including several large ones.  President Nixon halted the canal construction before it could be finished but the dam remains and attempts to dismantle it and begin restoring the river have failed due to political resistance.

Every three to four years the Corps draws down the water level in the reservoir and, for a few weeks, several of the “lost” springs reappear.  Cannon is one of them.  I had planned on snorkeling here to photograph the fish and spring but I was the only human within miles and I never swim alone, especially when there is a five foot alligator sunning on the bank.  This photo was taken by holding the camera underwater as I floated nearby.  The larger of the two spring basins is in the background including the two vents where water flows out fast enough to keep the limestone clear of debris.  Also visible are several species of fish including lake chubsucker (Erimyzon sucetta), largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), chain pickerel (Esox niger), and bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus).  The spring is now submerged beneath four additional feet of murky brown water and won’t be visible again until at least 2023.

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Readers’ wildlife photos

May 29, 2020 • 7:45 am

Tony Eales from Brisbane has sent us a collection of mixed arthropod photos. His notes are indented:

I just thought I’d throw together some oddballs for fun.

First, a tiny little mite known as a whirly-gig mite family Anystidae. These guys are so small and fast that I rarely attempt to photograph them even if I see one. However this one stopped for half a second and I just managed to get the focus.

Next, a particularly pretty planarian worm called Australopacifica regina, found in the local subtropical rainforest under a log.

This is one of the cup moth or slug moth caterpillars. Calcarifera ordinata. The stings are said to be particularly fierce. Happily so far I remain un-stung, touch wood (actually don’t touch anything in the bush, it probably stings or bites, just take photos).

Next a few spiders. First, an undescribed member of the genus Celaenia. This genus generally imitate bird droppings though this one not so much. Still, it l doesn’t look very appetising.

Second an ant-mimicking jumping spider. Not as convincinga  close-up as the more well-known Myrmarachne species, but from above at a glance, it’s still very ant-like. This one is genus Ligonipes sp: .‘white brows’. A very common but as yet undescribed species.

The last spider is an Oonopid aka goblin spider. Maybe, genus Grymeus. I’ll know more later as there’s a person at the Qld Museum currently working on the family and I’m sending the specimen in to go into the collection. For fun I’ve added a picture of the spider in the test tube. See if you can spot it.

I picked up something fairly rare the other day, a species of lace bug, Tingidae. To me it looked like the fairly common pest known as the Azalea Lace Bug Stephanitis pyrioides but the experts said “Oh no, The shape of the hemelytron is distinctly different. This is an Australian endemic, Lepturga magnifica. In any case, it’s an interesting looking bug.

Weevils are so diverse and there are some extreme variations on the weevil bauplan. This is one of the odder ones Rhadinosomus lacordaireei or Thin Strawberry Weevil.

Last but not least, a weird offshoot of in the lacewing Order Neuroptera, a Beaded Lacewing in the family Berothidae. These are unusual within the Neuropterans for having particularly hairy wings. The one pictured is  Stenobiella sp. The larvae of these lacewings live in termite mounds, apparently unmolested, snacking on a passing termite when hungry. Wired did an article on how the larvae have been observed to paralyse the hapless termite with termite-stunning farts

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 8, 2020 • 8:00 am

We have two contributors today.

First, reader Martin Heller has several photos from the South Pacific. His notes (as with everyone’s) are indented:

Here are three pictures from my last stay in Bali (Jan-Mar 2020).

Preying mantis with prey, species unknown. The plant is a Giant Milkweed, Calotropis gigantea.

Colorful things growing on a stone in a tiny lava rock pond. Some fish in the lower left corner.

Cicak (house gecko), Hemidactylus frenatus, in a massage booth at the hotel pool.

From Garry VanGelderen in Ontario:

While in isolation (now going on for at least 5 weeks) I have been spending a lot of time in the alcove of the house. This alcove looks out on my backyard where I have several bird feeding stations and many trees. With few exceptions, these pictures have been taken through the glass of the windows.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius), male:

Red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus), male:

Northern flicker (Colaptus auratus), male:
Downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens), male:
Red-wing blackbird (Ageaius phoeniceus),male:

Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), female:

And a bonus mammal (you guess it!):

Boston: Penguin Day visit to the Aquarium, and noms

January 21, 2020 • 11:00 am

As yesterday was Penguin Appreciation Day, we decided to visit the refurbished New England Aquarium, which has a lovely penguin exhibit, as well as many other nice exhibits. (They care well for their animals.) The penguin tank, which is huge, occupies the whole first floor of the aquarium, and, though it’s said to harbor rockhopper penguins and African penguins (Spheniscus demersus), we saw only the latter.

I saw rockhoppers in the Falkland Islands, but Africans are new to me. Here’s one in the Aquarium.

And here are two.

Luckily for us, it was penguin feeding time when we arrived. It’s a laborious exercise because, as you see in my video below, each tagged penguin is fed a precise number of fish by hand, and their consumption is tallied on a chart. Each fish is dipped in water before being proffered to the bird. This ensures that all penguins are well nourished, but I’m a bit sad that they don’t get the experience of catching fish on their own in the water. But that would have its own problems, including nutritional inequities.

A pair of them were mating—or trying to.

African penguins are also called “jackass penguins” because of their cacophonous braying. You can hear that in the video below.

Matthew sent me this tweet, which I’m just throwing in. I can imagine a penguin dating profile: “Natty dresser, loves long walks on the beach and fish dinners.”

They also had a couple of young cuttlefish in a tank, and I was mesmerized by them. They’re very smart, of course, but can also, like their relatives, change color quickly. They also have two “feeding tentacles” that shoot out instantly from the mouth region to snatch prey. You can see both the color change and the feeding apparatus in the video below.

Another hovering cuttlefish.

There was a lovely albeit small exhibit of jellyfish in a tank full of brine shrimp (I think). Here’s a photo and a video:

For lunch it was a short walk to the highly regarded Mexican lunch spot Tenóch near Davis Square.

It’s an unprepossessing place, serving tortas (Mexican sandwiches on fat rolls), tacos, and burritos. Their tortas are their best-known item.

The menu. I had the torta pastor with pork in achiote sauce, a big slice of fresh pineapple, pickled vegetables, cheese, and, well, look at the photo at the bottom and figure it out yourself. It was superb!

Unopened torta:

My sandwich, opened to show its contents. Yum!

I recommend this place highly if you’re near Davis or Porter Squares.

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 10, 2019 • 7:45 am

My photo tank is getting lower, so please send in your good wildlife photos. Today’s contribution is a passel of “semi-slugs” from Tony Eales, who hails from Queensland. His notes are brief. (I had no idea that there were “semi-slugs”! Since for some of these the shell can hardly be of any use for survival, perhaps some of these are in the process of losing their shells and evolving into “real slugs”.

According to Wikipedia, semi-slugs are “land gastropods whose shells are too small for them to retract into, but not quite vestigial. The shell of some semi-slugs may not be easily visible on casual inspection, because the shell may be covered over with the mantle.”

Israel colonizes the Moon

August 6, 2019 • 4:15 pm

Not satisfied with taking over the West Bank, Israel, in a clever plot probably orchestrated by Mossad, has sent Jewish animals, tardigrades, to the Moon. (Mossad has a well known history of using animals as spies or attack surrogates.) Since tardigrades can survive complete desiccation and low temperatures, their deposition on the Moon is a probable attempt to establish an Israeli foothold on another planet. After all, a Swedish scientist has shown that tardigrades are the only animal known to be able to survive in space for a minimum of ten days.

Well, the speculations above are clearly sarcastic, but, according to C|Net and other sources, a malfunctioning Israeli spacecraft has indeed, though accidentally, deposited tardigrades (“water bears”) on the lunar surface (click on screenshot, and for more see this article in Wired):

From the article:

Back in April, an Israeli spacecraft called Beresheet, which carried thousands of dehydrated tardigrades (among other cargo), crashed on the moon. Some people wondered if the water bears could survive.

One of those people was Arch Mission Foundation founder Nova Spivack. Arch Mission Foundation is a nonprofit whose main goal is to create a “backup of planet Earth.”

Well there you go! Just substitute “Israel” for “planet Earth” and you have it.  But wait! There’s more! They put human DNA up there, too, surely from Israelis:

The Israeli spacecraft was transporting Arch Mission’s first lunar library, a digital archive holding the equivalent of 30 million pages of information. It also carried human DNA samples and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades. It’s unknown how much of the cargo actually ended up on the moon’s surface following the crash.

Based on Arch Mission’s analysis of the spacecraft’s path as well as the makeup of the lunar library itself, Spivack told Wired on Monday that he’s confident the library, a “DVD-sized object made of thin sheets of nickel,” survived the crash mostly intact.

That doesn’t mean the DNA or water bears are in good shape.

“We sent enough DNA to regenerate life on Earth, if necessary,” Spivack tweeted Tuesday. “Although it would require more advanced biotech than we have to do that. At least our DNA is offsite now. But note that cells and DNA cannot survive or reproduce on the moon. Yet if retrieved they could be useful.”

“Useful” indeed—to create an apartheid planet! But wait—there’s still more:

“About the tardigrades in the Lunar Library: Some are sealed in epoxy with 100 million human, plant and microorganism cells,” Spivack tweeted Tuesday. “Some are encapsulated onto the sticky side of a 1cm square piece of Kapton tape that is sealed inside the disc stack. They cannot reproduce on the moon.”

Even though the dehydrated tardigrades can’t spring to life on the moon, they could theoretically be gathered, revived and studied to teach us about their time there.

“It is not likely that cells can survive on the moon without a lot more protection from radiation,” Spivack added. “However the human cells, plant cells and micro organisms we sent could be recovered, studied and their DNA extracted — perhaps to be cloned and regenerated, far in the future.”

Arch Mission Foundation, Nova Spivack and SpaceIL didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

That’s because these firms are probable covers for Mossad.

Seriously, the quotes and story are real; there are tardigrades and human DNA on the Moon. But I don’t think there was a good reason to contaminate the planet that way, even if there’s no chance of these things becoming alive. We don’t want to go mucking about with the Moon by filling it with organisms and nucleic acids.

Here’s a video showing how tough these critters are:

Hawaii: A trip to the Waikiki Aquarium (and lunch)

June 26, 2019 • 1:45 pm

Two days ago we went to the Waikiki Aquarium, which had mixed reviews on the Internet for being small. But I found it fascinating. And yes, it’s not a Sea World with trained mammals (ecch!), but it specializes in tropical reef fish, and that it does very well. It also has a great series of jellyfish tanks.

Here are pictures of some of the inhabitants. Since it was dark, the shutter speed was slow and some of the snaps are out of focus. So be it.

The Aquarium specializes in raising corals (which it must for a realistic coral-reef display), and outside it has an exhibit about how it raises and grows these cnidarians (they’re related to jellyfish). Here are some of the lovely corals on exhibit. I know only a few of their names.

Hammer coral:

Bubble coral:

Unknown (to me) coral:

Octopus coral (also called Frogspawn coral):

Leaf coral, also called “potato-chip” coral (Agaracia agaricites, I think):

There was a lone Nautilus in a tank—the first I’d ever seen. I took a video. What a magnificent animal! It floated in one corner and waved its tentacles, so I didn’t see it swim. The family Nautilidae comprises six species, and I don’t know which one this is.

Here’s a great mimic, a Leaf scorpionfish (Taeniaotus triacanthus). Wikipedia reports on its mode of crypsis:

The leaf scorpionfish resembles a dead leaf lying in the water. To enhance this camouflage, it even makes gentle sideways movements in its pelvic area which make it resemble a drifting inert object. It is an ambush predator, waiting until suitable prey, a small fish or shrimp, approaches. Then it slowly moves with its pectoral fins close to the victim. When the leaf scorpionfish is close enough, the prey is sucked in by a sudden opening of its mouth. It eats small crustaceans, fishes, and larvae.

Here’s a video (not mine) showing its rocking, leaflike movements. You can get to the video by clicking on the blue box below:

https://vimeo.com/140481748

I think this is a banded coral shrimp (Stenopus hispidus), which Wikipedia describes as a “shrimplike decapod crustacean”. Is it a shrimp? I don’t know, for a quick trawl of the Internet seems to show that “shrimp” is a grab-bag name that may not be monophyletic.


It’s hard to photograph the many tanks containing diverse fish and corals, for the fish are always moving and the shutter speed is about 1/30 of a second. Here’s what they look like, though, and what I hope to see when I snorkel on the Big Island next week.

Is this Nemo? Nemo is a “false anemonefish”, but this is likely Amphiprion percula, the orange clownfish and a true anemonefish, which gains protection, as shown here, by hiding amidst the tentacles of stinging anemones.

Devil scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis diabolus), front, and green lionfish (Pterois sphex), rear:

Look this thing! No wonder it’s called the devil scorpionfish!

A jellyfish (species unknown):

Two videos of the jellyfish tanks in the aquarium. I’ve mislabeled these videos as from the “Honolulu Aquarium,” but they’re really from the Waikiki Aquarium:

A little girl and her relative look at each other:

And a post-activity lunch (yesterday) at Gina’s Bar-B-Que near Waikiki:

Gina’s is a kind of Korean plate-lunch place. For about $12 you get a Korean-style meat (like kalbi shortribs), three scoops of rice, and a choice of four Korean-style side dishes, including kimchi and picked daikon. Here are your selections:

My plate: Gina’s #1 special, with kalbi, barbecued beef, barbecued chicken, three scoops of rice, and daikon, a green (watercress), noodles, and, to be Hawaiian, macaroni salad. This was terrific, as the many five-star reviews attest: the quality of the meat and its flavoring was superb, and the sides were great as well. They have a huge cooler of ice water to wash it down.

I vote this one of the three best plate lunches of Oahu, along with the Waiahole Poi Factory and the Highway Inn (Waipahu branch only). As with all the good places, Ginas is an unprepossessing place that you’d overlook if you just judged by the storefront.