So go watch some deep-sea movies—there are a couple of exotic cephalopods, some predatory arthropods and fish, and a very pretty sea cucumber. It cooled me right down.
(tip o’ the hat to Phil)
I’ve had about 8 requests for further information on saving the Australian lungfish. That’s a good start, and thanks to everyone who wrote in, but it’s not enough. Look at that beautiful finny beast to the right; do you want them all to die? And seriously, look at those fins: aren’t they spectacular? Don’t you want to know how they develop and how they evolved?
The Australian government is planning to dam the last rivers on which these spectacular vertebrates live, and that will be it for them. We’ll be left with nothing but bones and tissue samples and few relics in aquaria.
Those sure are beautiful, informative bones…but we can learn so much more from the living animal.
So let’s make one more big effort to let the Australian government know that there is international opposition to their cavalier destruction of an important and unique habitat. Losing these special creatures is a loss of scientific information and a loss of an unusual element of the Australian ecosystem.
If you’ve got a moment, write a polite and considerate letter to one or all of the following members of the Australian government. Let them know that they are planning to do irreparable damage to their environment, and the world is watching them.
It doesn’t have to be a long letter, it would be sufficient to write a brief note that says the the world values these remarkable, unique animals, and that you think more effort must be made in cooperation with the scientific community to find alternatives. Remember, though: politeness and sincerity are paramount. Don’t give them an excuse to dismiss the email as the work of cranks.
A new report in this week’s Nature clears up a mystery about an enigmatic fossil from the Cambrian. This small creature has been pegged as everything from a chordate to a polychaete, but a detailed analysis has determined that it has a key feature, a radula, that places it firmly in the molluscan lineage. It was a kind of small Cambrian slug that crawled over matted sheets of algae and bacteria, scraping away a meal.
I just received a letter from Per Ahlberg, who is working as the international coordinator in a campaign to save the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, this magnificent creature:
Unfortunately, this species is threatened, and its situation is getting worse, as its habitat is at risk of destruction. As Dr Ahlberg put it:
Neoceratodus, which is the most tetrapod-like of living fishes and an invaluable source of information about the transition from fish to land vertebrates (particularly from an evo-devo perspective), is native only to the Mary and Burnett Rivers of Queensland. The adults usually live in deep pools, but they breed in shallow areas with lots of underwater vegetation. Because of the way water levels in dams fluctuate, you don’t get such shallow vegetated areas in dams, and accordingly there’s nowhere for the lungfish to breed. Downstream of the dam, reduced flow will lead to the drying out of established breeding areas, and because lungfish are very loyal to their old breeding sites – they often simply cease to breed if their old sites are lost – this is also likely to have a severe long-term impact on the population. On 5 July the Queensland Government approved a major dam on the Mary River. A dam on the Burnett River was approved in 2003 and is already under construction, so the lungfish has its back against the wall. The dam can still be stopped by the Federal government, as Neoceratodus is a protected animal, but they need to be persuaded to act. We have very little time.
I’ve got some contact information I can pass along to anyone who is seriously interested in helping out by putting pressure on Australian politicians or media—just drop me a line, and I can forward your message on or reply back with some names and email addresses.
It’s July in Minnesota, and you know what that means: bugs. Clouds of bugs. Some people complain, but I generally rationalize a large population of fecund invertebrates as simply a sign of a healthy ecosystem, so yeah, we’ve got bugs, but it’s good for us.
Except for those mosquitoes. It’s hard to think charitably of some invertebrates when you’re lying in bed at night and you hear…that…high-pitched whine rising as the nearly invisible little blood-sucker buzzes by your exposed flesh. Now, in a discovery calculated to increase my irritation, I learn that the little bastards are singing a love song as they hover about, looking for an opportunity to stab me and suck my blood. “Come to me, come to me, mon chéri,” they sing, “after I gorge myself on ze fat, torpid hu-man (and daintily spit up a little backwash into his capillaries), we shall make sweet, sweet love in the moonlight and zen I shall lay a thousand eggs, and our progeny shall feast on his children!” (Sorry, but now whenever I hear them they’ve also got a silly Pepe LePew French accent.)
Eh. It’s a mannered debate about the plural of “octopus”. Honestly, I think fretting about whether the root is Latin or Greek and the ending of the plural form matches is a waste of time—we’re speaking English. What matters is that it is understood, and what the convention is. So let’s ask the scientists who study octo-whatsises!
Searching PubMed for the various forms of “octopus” gives the following numbers of references:
| Octopus: | 1,608 |
| Octopuses: | 592 |
| Octopods: | 16 |
| Octopi: | 6 |
| Octopodes: | 0 |
| Octopedes: | 0 |
I’m sticking with octopuses, the form hallowed by informed usage. I won’t spit in your eye if you call them octopi. I suspect the only people who would call them octopedes are skulking about on the humanities side of campus.
I’ve been told that there is a drop of old Dutch blood in my ancestry—that way back in the 17th century, an intrepid few Dutch immigrants mingled their seed with the mongrel mess of my father’s line. I think now I sense a kindred spirit. Adriaen Coenensz, a fisherman and fish seller from Scheveningen in Holland wrote and illustrated a book between 1577 and 1580 titled Het Visboek (“The Fishbook“). It’s an amazing browse. Apparently, Coenensz was interested in adventure and exotic dining experiences…
…he was an early devotee of science fiction…
…and most of all, he was obsessed with squid and fish. There’s page after page of aquatic organisms.
It suits my fancy to imagine that Old Adriaen had a few grandchildren who emigrated to the New World, intermarried with English and Scots and German settlers, had families that drifted west with the frontier, ended up on the Pacific coast where they blended with Swedes and Norwegians, and the end result is me, here to carry on the long-hallowed family tradition. Frater, ave atque vale!
There are just too many pretty molluscs in the world, so today you get TWO Friday Cephalopods, this one thanks to NOAA.
Just think, their children will be such lovely cyborg cephalopods.
Only this one has a real prize. Invasive Species Weblog wants a title for an article—a strange story about those wretched starlings.
