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Marine Life Series: Intro to Algae
Algae are the dominant photosynthetic organisms found in marine ecosystems. They may be tiny planktonic organisms, comprised of merely a single cell, or clusters or strands of a few dozen cells. These...
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Marine Life Series: Anatomy of a Snail Shell
All snails belong to the phylum Gastropoda (literally "stomach-footed"). Nearly all are covered with a single spiral shell. Given that there are around 75,000 species around the world, plus several...
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Marine Life Series: Megalodon
Thirty-three years ago a young upstart director named Steven Speilberg made what is now viewed as the first summer blockbuster movie. This film made stars of Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert...
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Marine Life Series: Sand Dollars
Most people know the sand dollar as the dried, white "shell" found in craft stores and gift shops. What you are seeing is simply the test, or skeleton, of a once living animal. Sand dollars are related...
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Marine Life Series: Cassiopeia
In Greek mythology, Cassiopeia was the beautiful and vain wife of Cepheus, an Ethiopian king. Cepheus and Cassiopeia had a daughter, Andromeda, who was to be wed to the hero Perseus. Cassiopeia, at the...
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Marine Life Series: Albino Rock Crab
Last Friday you guys voted overwhelmingly for Hermit Crab Basics as this week’s MLS topic. Unfortunately I’ve been dealing with the flu all week so I haven’t been up for doing the research. I’ll tackle...
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Marine Life Series: Aristotle's Lantern
[This diary was first posted to Daily Kos on August 11, 2006.]Sea urchins are Echinoderms, spiny-skinned animals related to starfish and sea cucumbers. Echinodermata is a rather small phyla of animals...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Basics
Hermit crabs are found all over the world in shallow waters and are one of the more familiar coastal animals. Although they have an exoskeleton, as all crustaceans do, this protective covering only...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Reproduction and Torpor
As we saw last week in the diary Hermit Crab Basics, hermit crabs have abandoned a crustacean's typical total exoskeleton body coverage in exchange for the security of living inside an old univalve...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crab Symbionts
This is part III on hermit crabs. Hermit Crab Basics is here, and hermit crab reproduction is here.Tonight I’d like to focus on hermit crab symbionts. Symbiosis is a relationship between unrelated...
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Marine Life Series: Hermit Crabs and Exotic Species
Generally the introduction of a non-native species of plant or animal into an ecosystem is a destructive event. Whether they be rabbits or poisonous cane toads introduced to the Australian outback or...
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Marine Life Series: Mermaid’s Purses
While beachcombing it's not uncommon to come across the strange thing pictured above mixed in among the various beach debris. This is the empty egg case, or "Mermaid's Purse", of a Skate.Fish are...
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Marine Life Series: Squid Egg Mops
Squid are free-swimming mollusks, and like their close relatives the octopods, they are intelligent, predatory, fast-growing and have a depressingly short life span usually lasting merely a year.The...
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Marine Life Series: Coconut Crabs
Arthropods, including crustaceans, insects and arachnids, are by far the largest group of animals that exist on Earth, comprising over 80% of all known species of animals. And the single largest...
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Marine Life Series: The Blue-eyed Scallop
[This diary was originally posted to Daily Kos on August 25, 2006.]The Bay Scallop (Aequipenctin irradians) is a Molluscan maverick. The species has succeeded by breaking or bending the rules of...
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Marine Life Series: Lionfish Invasion
[Last Monday night's broadcast of NBC News, Brian Williams was scheduled to run a story on the introduction of these fish to the U.S. This essay was originally published to Daily Kos on October 7,...
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Marine Life Series: Giant Conger Eels
This diary was originally posted to Daily Kos on September 6, 2006. Normal diary schedule should resume starting next week. Sorry for the absence this summer.A while back I posted a diary on the...
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Marine Life Series: Exploring the Surface of an Asteroid
In the coastal marine environment countless species of algae and invertebrates use various methods of attaching to firm substrates to eke out their living. Think about anytime you’ve visited the...
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Marine Life Series: Moon Snails and Sand Collars
Snails are members of a class of mollusks known as Gastropoda. The word is derived from the latin words for stomach and foot. So, these are "stomach-footed" animals, and I can't think of another...
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Marine Life Series: Pipefish
Pipefish are distinctive little fish that resemble seahorses stretched out straight. Like seahorses they snap up their prey using a long tubular snout, have a body covered in bony plates and brood...
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