#PolychaeteDay 2018 Edition: Swimming Polychaete Worms!

Photo by Karen Osborn

So, Every July 1st is the, now posthumous, birthday of NMNH curator Kristian Fauchald, who was one of the most prolific taxonomists publishing on polychaete worms of the 20th Century! 

This began in 2015 following his death (see the NMNH blog:  http://nmnh.typepad.com/100years/2015/06/1st-annual-international-polychaete-day.html

and has been held every year since then.. celebrated BOTH online and at the NMNH itself in Washington DC!!

I have honored this tradition with polychaete posts!

2015: Five Things you probably didn't know about polychaete worms: http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/five-things-you-probably-didnt-know.html

2016: Five GREAT Polychaete Names!
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/five-great-polychaete-names-for.html

I missed 2017 because I was out at sea with the R/V Okeanos Explorer!  
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/okeanos-explorer-communities-deep-sea.html

But I've blogged PLENTY about polychaetes to make it up!

A post about Polychaete Jaws!
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/polychaete-jaws-and-proboscises-for.html

My post about "Who Named the Bobbit Worm?" (which actually involves Kristian Fauchald)
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/who-named-bobbit-worm-eunice-sp-and.html

Stunning Polychaete Photos by Arthur Anker! 
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/off-topic-panoply-of-polychaetes-photos.html

and Gorekia,  a polychaete which lives INSIDE an urchin!
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/gorekia-worm-that-lives-inside-sea.html

So, for 2018 I am BACK for #POLYCHAETE DAY!  So for this year.. a fun topic:
POLYCHAETE WORMS THAT SWIM!!

So, #2 to #5 are pelagic taxa.. that is they live exclusively (or mostly) in the 3-dimensional oceanic space ! They generally don't live on the bottom of the ocean floor. and so, they have adaptations which help them to live in this unique and vast area! as we'll see...

5. TOMOPTERIS! 

First up are some of my FAVORITE swimming worms! Those in the genus Tomopteris!

These are apparently VERY successful with a widespread distribution all around the world. There are apparently 35 to 50 species in this genus! About 15 of these occur in the subgenus Tomopteris (Johnstonella) which I suspect means there is some contention over how many there are..

BUT I can tell ya' this much! The NAME Tomopteris is Latin for "Split wing" which alludes to the paddles on each of their little legs!  and the fact that it is apparently "cut" into two halves..


Tomopteris is apparently a PREDATORY worm, with at least one species indicated as a predator on arrow worms !

and as seen in many swimming species they are BIOLUMINESCENT!  I don't have great shots of their glowie powers..but they ARE very photogenic animals.. so here's some video...




4. Alciopid Worms! 

Image by Karen Osobrn NMNH StreamCode SMS: https://twitter.com/InvertebratesDC/status/881237769762349056

The family Alciopidae apparently includes about 12 genera, but I believe only  a few genera are actually pelagic.. that is free swimming.

Alciopid worms are most likely to be PREDATORY.  They have an ENORMOUS proboscis which is presumably used to feed ON other prey...


and They are known for having ENORMOUS EYES which are complex in a manner analogous to vertebrate eyes with lenses, irises, corneas and such.. So, they actually have well-developed VISION which is thought to assist in prey avoidance..


Here is a GORGEOUS chart on alciopid eyes via the Biodiversity Heritage Library Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarinaDSLR/status/575528089242959872

here was a nice back and forth about this deep-sea alciopid worm on Twitter!

BIG eyes on this one! An alciopid polychaete in our Pacific abyssal samples #WormWednesday #ABYSSLINE pic.twitter.com/A9QQbKUQ9z

— Helena Wiklund (@helena_wiklund) September 27, 2017

Here's some swimming video! (thanks to Jackson Chu!)




3. The Deep-sea Pig Butt Worm! Chaetopterus pugaporcinus

I'll be honest. There's not much that I can add to this which wasn't already said by MBARI when the species was described:https://www.mbari.org/a-worm-like-no-other/

These are part of a genus of segmented worms called Chaetopterus, most of which aren't actually swimming species.. They kinda look like this:      Many of them live in a paper-like tube..


This pelagic species was unusal in having swollen segments wich gave it an unusual appearance...And yes..the Latin name epithet "pugaporcinus".. is LITERALLY translated as "Pig Butt" 

2. Swima bombaviridis! Swimming bomber worms! and relatives...(the Acrocirridae)
So, this is kind of a "two for one" deal because members of this one family of swimming polychaetes, the Acrocirridae actually have TWO very interesting members

Here were the "Squid worms" Teuthidodrilus samae whose very formidable appearance got them a notable write up in National Geographic among other places../ (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101124-squid-worm-new-species-science-teuthidodrilus-biology/)

and some "Squid Worm video! 

Karen Osborn and her associates later discovered ANOTHER member of this group delivered glowing green bombs as a defense mechanism! 

Here was a nice video of that discovery via California Academy of Sciences & MBARI!

Time for a Swima! #Okeanos recently saw this swimming polychaete, in aptly named genus, Swima. Join us for another dive later today! pic.twitter.com/VAOy9WviOY

— NOAA Ocean Explorer (@oceanexplorer) September 19, 2017

and of course..we have seen other members of this group on Okeanos Explorer..

Engima Seamount 2016: https://twitter.com/WPolyDb/status/724026014725099520

1. EPITOKES! mmm... yummy! 
FINALLY.. the last category of swimming segmented worms is kind of a mixed bag.  This includes worms while swimming which are NOT a specific group  and NOT a group of worms that swims its entire life..
This is the unusual phenomena in polychaetes known as EPITOKY! 
This is the reproductive phase for many polychaete worms in which they physically change and  shift into a swimming form or mode! these species typically are adapted to bottom living.

Presumably this sudden ability to swim goes hand in hand with dispersal of the reproductive products.

Here for example.. we have an example of a sexually mature worm carrying its products while also swimming! aka engaging in pelagic life mode.


This change in life mode can be a bit of a surprise when your 2 foot long bristle worms are suddenly swimming around like giant snakes!

In the Indo-Pacific region, there are HUGE numbers of these epitokes swimming around in the water column and apparently, they are QUITE tasty..

Although prepared in many different ways, sometimes its apparently best to just have them on toast! 

from the original blog: http://mrlavalava.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html

Have I missed other examples of "proper" swimming polychaetes?  Almost certainly! 

Here for example is Poebius meseres which apparently feeds on marine snow..

and of course.. MBARI has a GREAT video that samples a bunch of them in spectacular fashion..


Enjoy the 2018 Polychaete Day! 

The "starfish walking back to the sea" FAQ & why it is sad

So, apparently back in 2012, the original producer of this video shot this lone sea star out on a South Carolina beach as it was struggling to get back to the ocean, likely due to a mass stranding or some other event which stranded it on the tropical Atlantic beach..

Here's the original, very static heavy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV5H1qNwFKo

and here is the "cleaned up" version which was released in October 2017...

This video went viral and was circulated widely in a huge number of widely read newspapers all over the world including The Sun, the UK's Daily Mail and oddly enough, the Indian Express! 

These and other venues reported it with such inaccurate hyperbole as "Incredible moment starfish WALKS down the beach after getting stranded on the sand!!" with the word "INCREDIBLE" being dropped as if this was somehow aliens landing on the Earth for the first time!


But sadly, what was happening here wasn't really THAT momentous and in fact was pretty sad.

There was no information on what was happening, what species this was or the context of this whole thing...  So here's my attempt to shed some light on this..

1. What species is this? And how does it live normally? 

This is a starfish called Luidia clathrata and these are members of a group of "sand stars" called the Luidiidae. A family with only one genus, Luidia named for a 18th century Welsh naturalist  named Edward Lhuyd whose Latin handle (they all had one!) was Luidius. One of his colleagues named this genus of sea stars after him in 1840 a story was born!

You can read lots about Luidia in a blog I wrote here in 2014!

Long story short..they eat snails, clams and other small critters in the sand. They can bury themselves in the top part of the sediment where they live.

This species in the waters of the tropical Atlantic on the US coast.. Florida, South Carolina, etc. are commonly encountered and commonly seen on beaches..

2. Seen on BEACHES? Why is THAT??
 How did this individual end up on the beach? Likely due to a mass stranding following a storm, which I've written about here... But here's a video of such an occurrence featuring many, MANY of this species stranded along the shoreline

3. What makes them so vulnerable? 
Basically these sea stars don't have a lot of "hold" on the surface because their tube feet are pointed rather than suckered. Their little tube feet are modified to help them efficiently dig into the sand or other sediment both to help them feed and to hide them from potential predators..

BUT when big waves or currents come along.. they can be swept away and taken to hostile environs such as this seashore..

Bear in mind that this species is quite abundant and while its unclear what these "natural disasters" mean for the population of these animals, I wouldn't be surprised if the recovery was relatively quick given how many of them there are..

4. What do they look like alive and "normal"???
Here is a healthy individual of this species moving naturally underwater, albeit near the beachfrot

Starfish from paul zoeller on Vimeo.

As the video would indicate..these are actually elegant and very beautiful animals in their natural habitat. In fact, Luidia is one of the FASTEST known sea star species..

5. Why is it sad?
    So, its literally been months since the original "crawling" video posted but I STILL have this being sent to me with comments about "HOW WONDERFUL IS NATURE OCEAN" or "AMAZING OCEAN CREATURE" etc. etc... when in truth this video exploits this animal desperately trying to get back to the ocean

    There's an important consideration here: Sea stars operate using a unique series of tubes in their body called the water vascular system which operates primarily using hydraulic pressure throughout the arms and so forth. This is how they move and operate all of their tube feet and so on...

via http://www.deepseanews.com/2012/03/veins-of-water-the-evolution-of-the-echinoderm-water-vascular-system/

  The water vascular system NEEDS SEAWATER TO OPERATE.

Many echinoderms DO have a limited ability to tolerate BRIEF periods out of water..but this is essentially the animal with residual water remaining in its Water Vascular System, such as the tube feet and so on..

Fluid is still required for movement AND survival. Water carries oxygen and other necessities, such as food and etc. throughout the body. 

So, that long crawl back? is not both a crawl to return to comfort but also a return for SURVIVAL.

Folks who express the "WONDER" over that pic are perhaps extending a... misplaced emotion.. 

Fortunately the original producers of the video have said repeatedly that they had returned that specimen to the ocean shortly after they shot it. So, good on them. I thank you on behalf of the starfishes!!

So, in the meantime..can we PLEASE let the video go  and LOSE  all of the sad, misplaced hyperbole about how amazing this is?? Its just painful to watch. 

thanks. 

Taxonomy Day 2018! Museum Trends from Starfish Travels!

So for the last 3 years, I've been lucky. There have been multiple opportunities for me to do field work but more importantly to visit museum all around the world in order to study the animals I love so much! I've been away for up to four months every year for the last few years. 

Australia, Japan, South Africa, Paris, Honolulu, San Francisco..and probably more in the years to come..

I've said in prior Taxonomy Day posts the Natural History Museum is the home and indeed the HABITAT of the Taxonomist! 

So, today.. some impressions of common trends that I've observed in honor of today.. TAXONOMY DAY! aka Taxonomy Appreciation Day! 

1. Museums Remain THE HUB for discoveries!

I've been in the field plenty of times. Intertidal zones on various continents and islands. Two submersible dives, out on plenty of ships.. but in terms of finding a BUNCH of new species all in one trip?? NOTHING beats a visit to see the collection of a good natural history museum!!

Everything from natural history surveys, research expeditions, to simple donations by well-travelled museum patrons you can find all manner of important specimens that result in new species, rarely found species, juveniles and even specimens showing ecological interactions!

My recent travel has been VERY fruitful. Mainly resulting from recent deep-sea expeditions to exotic lands!

In the MNHN in Paris, their recent expeditions to the Indian Ocean, particularly their expeditions to Madagascar and nearby areas have resulted in a forthcoming paper where I will describe over a dozen new species of goniasterid sea stars! and there were more....

Other museums have been similarly fruitful!! 

The Museum Victoria in Melbourne for example includes recent work by Australian colleagues including Dr. Tim O'Hara returned last year with thousands of specimens, ranging from worms to sea stars to fishes! from a survey of the deep-sea habitats of Australia! 

Their work recovered hundreds of new records and many new species of sea stars. Its gonna take awhile to work that up!! As I've mentioned before.. prior work has recorded that it takes on average about 21 years for a specimen to go from collection to shelf to publication! 

I've been ahead of the curve in describing many of these species!


2. When a Good Thing Becomes a Challenge: Space the Ongoing Frontier!
So. Here's the thing. A reality of ANY kind of collection. At some point, if it is growing at a healthy clip, EVENTUALLY you will have problems with space.

That is to say.. not enough of it. You have more and more specimens.. and eventually every shelf, every inch of space gets used up.

Its not unusual for some museums to literally inherit a collection from ANOTHER collection, often from universities or other academic institutions, instantly doubling the contents but also the workload and burden on resources.

This post from Science highlights this issue of "orphaned" collections. Some collections, containing scientifically valuable and important specimens ranging from fishes to plants often face problems due to lack of support..

This is an issue that has come up at EVERY museum collection I have visited!

This especially becomes an issue if you work on big, ungainly shaped animals such as sea stars! Some animals are conveniently small and "stack" conveniently..but others.. not so much.

Museums are often judicious in what they accept..but in other cases they are obliged either legally or  scientifically to accept valuable specimens.  Sometimes museums are faced with inheriting important historical collections-lots of type specimens, rare or even extinct (non fossil) species..

Solutions are there...new buildings. Fund raising. Remodeling to maximize space! This is an ongoing challenge even in the most modern of institutions with natural history collections (or any kind of museum really)  These types of challenges keep a future vision for natural history collections important.


3. Databasing & Cataloging! Making Collections Available to everyone!
This is, of course, a natural function of any natural history museum collection.

Keeping track of what's available.. BUT lately there has been a HUGE push to make sure that materials have not only been cataloged and database but ALSO available to the scientific public!

This has been especially important for historically important scientific collections such as the one at Paris, which has specimens that have been around since the 1800s and the time of Lamarck!

Museums have taken to making creative use of volunteers and citizen scientists to help with cataloging specimens.  I've seen "cataloging parties" where volunteers help to sort and catalog specimens en masse (simple locality data) into a database leaving the more complex entry tasks to the staff.

Museums with Online Catalogs!
Museum national d'Historie Naturelle:  https://science.mnhn.fr/all/search
Invertebrate Zoology at the NMNH, Smithsonian Institution: https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/iz/
Invertebrate Zoology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco: http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/izg/iz_coll_db/index.asp
Collections Search at Museum Victoria: https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/search

4. Digital Imagery: More of it and its increasing significance!
The last few years have seen a HUGE uptick in the abundance and availability of imagery.

Everything from live-streamed deep-sea biology such as Okeanos Explorer : http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html  (returning in April!)

Controversy has been found as some scientists have argued imagery itself can be used in stead of specimens: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/bug-species-photo/409108/

But more commonly throughout the museum world I've merely seen that almost EVERYPLACE I've been has uploaded imagery of their collection, making those specimens available to anyone with internet access.

This is particularly important for those ever so rare specimens known as TYPES (here for full explanation) basically the specimen or specimens designated by the original researcher which defines a new species.

What's interesting is that while some people argue that this is a huge BOON to the community: 
"Digital images of the specimens will make it MUCH easier for people to see the specimen so we don't need to ship it or so they won't need to visit!"

Others have expressed the opinion that these images will DOOM the museum!
"Digital images of the specimens will make it MUCH easier for people to see the specimen so we won't need to ship it or so they won't visit!

Hmmm......

4a. Biodiversity Heritage Library!
I remember the olden terrible days before the days of the Internet..but ESPECIALLY before the days when the Biodiversity Heritage Library was available!!

At the very least, having to carry along the photocopy or notes of the huge taxonomic monograph was just a huge pain in the ass. Unfortunately, especially for marine invertebrates such as echinoderms the really IMPORTANT taxonomic references tend to be in huge oversized, heavy folios like these...

thanks to the online version of these books I can now carry a global-scale library for starfish taxonomy on my laptop.. almost anywhere in the world! Not everyone has a Smithsonian or Paris-level library.. but now you can.

A list of starfish BHL references can be found here: http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/classic-echinoderm-starfish-taxonomy.html

5. Shipping & Customs! New Challenges!
What might surprise many people is just how IMPORTANT shipping and customs regulations are to museum "business."

Specimens regularly ship back and forth between natural history museums, mostly as loans for researchers to study specimens they wouldn't normally be able to study.  Specimens would be analogous to rare books being sent back and forth between different libraries so that scholars in different parts of the world can refer to then..

Shipping unfortunately always seems to come with some risk..and more lately. Scientific specimens in preservative run afoul of safety shipping and biosecurity protocols. Many specimens, such as corals,  are now protected by international law, making them difficult to ship. and so on and so on...

In one high profile case in 2017, Australian customs officials who were ignorant or unaware of the value of museum specimens destroyed unique and priceless French holotypes... which led to an international incident.

Undoubtedly.. there are those who would say that nothing I've summarized here is necessarily new...and perhaps to the museum worker or working taxonomist..probably not. But the common travails of the natural history museum to the public are often hidden and I hope this helps to communicate the challenges that these museums face in the 21st Century! 

Unusual Surface Texture in Luidia ciliaris! Unknown natural history or ???

GREETINGS! and Happy New Year! Yes.  Sorry. Its been awhile since I've blogged.. Lots of travelling and research are a good thing...but time for essential outreach can sometimes be fleeting!

For my inaugural 2018 post: a MYSTERY!

I've written about the genus Luidia before.. these are predatory sand stars which are found all around the world.

They can vary in appearance and in some places they are very abundant.. Most species are shallow and occur in temperate tropical habitats. Although many species are five rayed.. some such as L. ciliaris can have seven or more arms. Some species in the tropical Indo-Pacific have very striking patterns and can reach almost 2 feet in diameter!

Luidia ciliaris is found pretty much only in the North Atlantic although it has likely close-relatives in nearby areas. This species is regularly seen by divers in the United Kingdom, France, Spain and etc..

Image from http://www.european-marine-life.org/30/photo-luidia-ciliaris-wb01.php

Today.. Andy Jackson, an underwater photographer grabbed this wonderful time lapse video of the North Atlantic 7 armed sea star Luidia ciliaris IN ACTION!  Doing a move through this field of brittle stars! 

seven armed starfish with banding - Luidia ciliaris from Andy Jackson on Vimeo.

Interestingly, he noticed that THIS one had a VERY unusual banding or strange segmentation on the arms!

He came to me with the question.. WHAT IS the BANDING??? That strange surface texture that is visible on the surface of the animal???

You see it in headlines a lot...but I will actually say it "Scientist (in this case-ME) was baffled!!"

BUT, it turns out other people on social media have seen it before.. even if they didn't realize what it was... 

 

Here is a normal one again for comparison.. the top surface is even.. NOT with the strange surface segments present along the arms..

Image from http://www.european-marine-life.org/30/photo-luidia-ciliaris-wb01.php

So, when I see deformations like this.. I always have to wonder about two possible hypothesis:

1. Is this a "normal" part of this species' behavior?? Something which we have simply never seen before?  

2. Or could it be NOT normal... What could this mean?? I don't know. But years ago? Sunflower stars in British Columbia began experiencing weird "arm twists"  and it wasn't much longer after that, that the entire population of sunflower stars suffered from SSWD

One might see from Andy's video that the animal was in the process of moving through a field of brittle stars..could the odd surface texture have been caused as a defense? from irritation? stress? 

This is why "Natural History" becomes important! and how citizen scientsts, including everyone from divers to intertidal naturalists have something to contribute! 

For example, this Twitter thread from July 2017 shows a specimen of Luidia ciliaris washed up on a beach with the"banding" on its arms.. (note arm in front above the person's left hand)

Photo by Chris Orr via Twitter

One person in the thread speculates that the star was not in good health...was it? Possibly just stressed from being washed up??  Certainly, this was idle speculation and it is difficult to know what was going on... 

Yeah, what about this, just found at Lamlash beach, massive starfish pic.twitter.com/2FUbpnio9r

— Chris Orr (@ChrisOrr_ELC) July 22, 2017

So, I am putting this OUT THERE to let people be aware of it.. and who knows? 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??? 

Perhaps a pathologist, natural historian, ecologist and more? Might take up an interest... More data and MORE OBSERVATIONS could well help us figure out if this is something to be concerned about..
(thanks to Andy Jackson and Bernard Picton!)