Team Unionid

Taxonomy is a wily beast.  As François discussed in his previous post, keeping up with who is called what can be a complex issue.  Species can be synonomized with other species, moved to other genera, split from their current species into a new species (or new genus), and back again and so forth.  This can make things somewhat complicated for museum collections, especially when we receive collections that have been collected throughout history.  We get specimens that have the ID that was correct when they were collected 50 years ago, but what is the current correct name? What is the name in our database?  Is it one of those two or one of the many steps in between?  There are a (very) few groups that have current taxonomy listings on line, but we deal with so many groups from so many phyla.  It usually takes an expert, who is familiar with the current literature of their particular group to clear things up. Fortunately for us, we know an expert for one of our largest groups, the Unionidae family of freshwater mussels, and he's recruited others.

Jim Williams, Matthew Rowe, and Jordan Holcomb have been combing through countless brown shells and getting our taxonomy in order. 

To give you an idea of what "countless" means...

Yeah, you could totally count that, but multiply it by...

That's still doable, might take a while, but...

Nearly that entire aisle is Unionids, and there are even a few cabinets worth in the previous aisle.  Let's not forget the wet collection.  Below is less than half of it.

Even though they are all caught up on the current taxonomy of this group, it still isn't always as straightforward as changing all specimens of one name to another.  Here is an excerpt of an email I got from Jordan outlining the specimen labels they needed updated and printed for the Lampsilis teres/floridensis group:

We will need everything from Florida listed as Lampsilis teres to be changed to Lampsilis floridensis.  All records from Georgia except those from Walker, Chattooga, Gordon, Floyd, Bartow, Whitfield, Murray, Gilmer, Catoosa and Polk counties listed as Lampsilis teres need to be changed to Lampsilis floridensis.  Finally, all Lampsilis teres holdings in Alabama from Butler, Barbour, Chambers, Conecuh, Covington, Crenshaw, Coffee, Escambia, Dale, Geneva, Henry, Houston, Lee, Pike, and Russell counties should be changed to Lampsilis floridensis. 

And this doesn't even account for the L. teres floridensis that we had cataloged from Iowa and Arkansas, or the L. teres teres specimens that needed to become L. teres.  So it's complicated, and we are really grateful that they are willing to spend all this time and effort helping to get our collection up to date.  We're also grateful for the bribes they bring us to keep the updated labels flowing.

Unionids are a challenging group to work with, but the challenges that they present to us pale in comparison to the challenges with which humanity has presented them.  Many species are critically endangered and some are suspected to now be extinct.  As a freshwater group, they rely on many of the same waterways that we utilize for drinking water, power, recreation, and many other uses.  Pollution and habitat loss have wreaked havoc on this group that is very sensitive to changes to their ecosystem.  If you want to know more about Unionids, check out Jim's book on the Alabama mussels, and keep your eyes peeled for his next one.

:) Mandy

Invertebrate Zoology is Nice(ville)

This past weekend we were visited by a group of high school students from Niceville, FL.  They have come to visit us every year for the past several years to get a taste of what we do, and to incorporate some of our techniques into their own projects and fieldwork.

They divided into three groups.  The first group explored the collection for a broad overview of the kind of biodiversity we have in our collection.  Of course Bathynomus giganteus, a giant isopod, was a hit.

Who could resist a face like this?

Photo from Wikipedia Commons

We had several exercises for them down in the collection.  Jenna worked with a group of students trying to sort brittle stars.  There is a group that has been historically identified as a single species, however genetics and the discerning eye of Tania (a visiting researcher) can find significant differences between several groups within the species.  We challenged the high school students to do the same, armed with Tania's genetic tree and a microscope

The students also braved the world of tunicates with Ronaldo who is visiting from Brazil.  He showed them some nice clear diagrams with taxinomically significant features highlighted.  They then looked through the microscope at a prepared specimen to see how tiny and easily confused these features really are.

Then they tried their hand at some microscope work of their own and prepared some sea cucumber ossicle slides with guidance from Starmer John and myself.  He even brought in the big fancy microscope from our office for the occasion, to demonstrate how ossicles show up under polarized light.

The second station was upstairs in the lab with Nat and Jennifer.  After explaining the PCR process and how we use it in our lab, the students all gloved up and prepared solutions for PCRing.  Since running the actual PCR is a process that takes several hours in the thermal cycler, Nat and Jennifer ran some pre-loaded gels so they could see the bands of DNA fragments of various lengths.

After their stint in the DNA lab, the students headed downstairs to work with François on aligning and cleaning DNA sequences using Geneious.  After we send our PCR products out for sequencing, the results we get back still need some hands-on attention before they are ready for prime-time, so the students got a taste of that.  François has undoubtedly spend many an hour in front of the computer with color-coded nucleotides dancing before his eyes. 

We had a great experience with the group and it's always fun to share our love of what we do, especially with potential future scientists.  In fact, you can never be too young to be engaged in invertebrate zoology...

...even if what that means for now is that you're drawing some octopus and crabs in with your flowers.

We're still here!

Poor neglected blog!  It's been so long since my last post, but don't worry, we haven't been slacking off.  Here, Adania is sorting Jenna's Tuamotus collection which we recently received in the mail.  Adania is probably smiling because Jenna really nailed it with the data organization and packaging of this collection.  The formalin and ethanol preserved item were separated!  And well-marked!

 Carmen also assisted with the sorting of this collection; it was a big project!  I think John might be doing some put-away to help clear out space on the table for the incoming colleciton.

 Elizabeth is kicking it old-school.  Instead of a collection generated through recent fieldwork, she is precataloging a collection donated to us from Diane deVry.  It includes some interesting specimens from some locations that are underrepresented in our collection.

This annoyingly-rotated picture (I know, bush league right?) also represents an incoming collection.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that it looks like battered boxes of sand because that's exactly what it is. Over the past several days, we have received packages containing sand from Moorea, the Marquesas, and the Tuamotus.  George has already started combing the sand for ostracods and has found some new and exciting material.  Sahale Casebolt (one of Michal Kowalowski's students) has also been notified and will soon be swooping in to look at the mollusc assemblages.

Nicole is a volunteer working with John Starmer on a project sorting and identifying land snails from Micronesian sediment samples.  In the photo below she is labeling some tiny snails in a tiny jar.

The aquariums are still going strong.  Here is Portunus gibbesii, freshly molted and either threatening me or begging for food...I'm sensing threat.

Also, check out the floor around my desk.  Are you thinking "I see nothing"?  Exactly!  There are no boxes of specimens piling up around my chair and awaiting my attention. You know what that means, Gustav is out of town. 

He and Patrick just returned to dry land from several weeks on a research vessel in the Red Sea with researchers from KAUST.  They will return to us in a few weeks with their collection...we'd better clear out some more space.

:) Mandy

St. Martin wrap-up

Our last days on St. Martin were a flurry of activity.  Our last day was spent draining ethanol in preparation for our flight and packing up all our specimens and gear.  The four of us who were returning to Gainesville checked a total of 9 bags eliciting the curiosity of our fellow passengers and the patient consternation of the airport personnel.  But as the end of our trip approached we kicked it into high gear and on our last day of fieldwork we did a total of 3 dives (or snorkels).  One of those dives was on a deep(ish) sand flat, which was habitat we hadn't hit before.  We found several new species for the project and had a hard time abandoning the bottom when it was time to come up.  This is especially true of Gustav who couldn't let the idle time of the safety stop go to waste and continued taking photos while hanging on the buoy line.

The sand flat was an ideal place for employing the yabby pump.

The rubbley reef we hit after that was an ideal place for some vacuuming.

As you may have noticed, neither spot was especially ideal for taking video.  After our final collecting binge we hastily dumped our equipment into our rustic rinse tank and pushed through the processing with the deadline of our departure looming.

I spent lots of quality time at the processing table which I shared with some urchins fixing in ethanol.  You'd be forgiven for thinking I had a tray of tea on the edge of my work area.  If only this photo were scratch and sniff, then you'd know better.

François took the opportunity of some time away from the photo station to do some picking through mass samples, and have a little QT with Holothuria mexicana, the donkey dung sea cucumber.  I can't imagine why it's called that, must be its pink belly.

 Our report with the final species list is due in August, and even though we're back in Gainesville our species count continues to grow as George combs through the sand samples we brought back for him.  He has already found 40 different species of ostracod!  We were able to identify many of the animals to species while we were in the field by emailing photos to experts in the various groups, but as we go through the collection we will continue to improve the IDs and sort through lots that were fixed as bulk lots with mixed species.  I'll let you know the final species count after we submit the report.  Even at this stage it is clear that we boosted the number of species that were known from within the reserve.

 

 It was a great trip and everyone from the Reserve was a great host.  Next step, cataloging!

:) Mandy

HQ News

We've had a lot going on these past several months.  At the end of 2011 we did some more Gulf of Mexico survey dives.  Check out the size of this sponge as compared to the size of that diver (me), keeping in mind that I was making myself as small as possible to conserve body warmth.

In addition to my role as sponge-scale-provider, I have also functioned as a pack mule.  John and I spent some time moving a donated collection from the nearby Bartram Hall over to our space in Dickinson.

The collection includes Bryozoan specimens as well as reference material.  We tackled the reference material first.  Finding a space to store it seemed a daunting task, but John undertook it with confidence.  Remind me never to challenge John to a game of Tetris.

We've also had a fair share of visitors these past months, although not up to the flood levels we have experienced in the past.  A group of art students came in for a couple of days to sketch some of the more comely and/or dramatic specimens in our collection.

Also back to visit us is Rob Lasley, now a grad student in Singapore.  As this touching photo of Rob and François can attest, Rob has integrated right back into the group.  He'll be here for a few months to look at our collection and get some additional data for his research on Chlorodiellinae, a group of marine crabs. We'll hate to see him leave us again.  The reason this picture is a little grainy-looking is because I took it surreptitiously through my dusty window.

We also spent some time tending to the giant squid that I mentioned in a previous post.  He had to spend some time soaking in formalin, but once he was sufficiently saturated we had to then soak him in water (to rinse him out) and then preserve him in ethanol.  Here are John and I pumping out the formalin (which is toxic, hence the respirators).

The other significant cephalopod in our lives also underwent some housing changes.  The Octopus was recently moved to a new mansion that we procured for her.

Unfortunately, she has since adopted some brooding behaviors and stopped eating; we are afraid that she might have laid eggs in her rock cave.  If that is indeed the case, she probably won't be with us for much longer.

And just so we don't close on that note...here is a picture of Julie competing in the arm wrestling tournament this past fall.

:) Mandy

ARMSed and Ready

Hey, remember all that time when I wasn't posting?  One of the things we were doing was survey dives in the Gulf off Cedar Key and Steinhatchee looking for suitable habitat to deploy some ARMS.  (You might remember ARMS from this post).  This is a continuation of the survey work we did on the R/V Weatherbird back in March (remember this or that or this other post), but the water was much warmer this time, approaching 90 degrees!  We were looking for hard-bottom areas, which turned out to be rarer than we might have anticipated.  Most of Gustav's quick peeks at the bottom revealed long stretches of sand, but a few times we found what we were looking for and went down to do a more extensive survey of the area.  These areas had lots of sponges and Caulerpa algae

and lots and lots of tunicates of various types

 

So now that we'd found some potential sites to set up some ARMS, where were we going to get them?  Thank goodness for Woody at the Smithsonian Research Station in Ft. Peirce.  They had some old disassembled ARMS that they were willing to let us use, and Woody even put them together for us (except for the base for ease of transport).  So what do 27 ARMS look like after they've been driven back to Gainesville and piled on a cart?

It sure would be foolish for one person to put 367 pounds of metal and pvc all together on a cart and then expect to move that cart over a non-flat surface...unless that person were a glutton for punishment, or placed well in an arm-wrestling competition, or both.

So now we have (some of) the monitoring locations, and we have the ARMS.  The boat is repaired, now all we need is Gustav.  He's making an appearance in November so we can go install them:  3 per site, 3 sites per location, 3 locations.  He'll only be around for a few days so we're sure to be busy.

All this talk of ARMS reminds me of someone else

 

Dickinson Hall has a new mascot.  In order to ward of the bad mojo that can follow from naming the animals in the aquarium, we call her The Octopus.  The picture above was taken when she was actually much younger (and smaller) and had not yet eaten all her non-echinoderm, non-cnidarian rommates.  Now she's much bigger and growing progressively more clever.  We often feed her live clams inside a jar with the lid on which is inside a large hamster ball with the lid on.  After opening up all the contraptions to get to her food, she sometimes sits inside the ball to eat.  We don't know what species she is, but we've recruited Julie to slip a little octopus tissue (from a tentacle shed) into her queue of tissues for DNA extraction.  I'll keep you posted.

With the return of diving I should have some more field pictures to post before too long.  In the interim John and I will be busy getting the collection in order:  labels, put-away, loans, incoming collections.  Gustav's current prime directive is to get things organized to make room for more specimens.  And don't worry, even though we still have ARMS installation and retreival posts in our future, I won't run out of puns for the post titles.

:) Mandy

Group Activities

It's been way too long since my last posting, but I have so many good-bye posts piling up ( Hsiu, Art, Jenna...did I do one for Machel!?) that I've been putting it off.  Well, I decided to forgo the good-bye posts for the time being  and focus on togetherness.  Although this blog is really all about the awesomeness of the Invertebrate Division, the truth is that the whole FLMNH is pretty awesome; here are some of the projects that we've shared with other divisions (or they've shared with us).

Several months ago a strange creature wandered into the range, and I was brave enough to tackle it, as seen in the photo below.

A quick call upstairs to some of the other ranges confirmed what we suspected, not only was this animal a vertebrate, it turns out it was a bird, more specifically a Muscovy Duck.  It's not known to be especially dangerous (lacking claws, spines, venom, spicules, cuvierian tubules, nematocysts, or any other invertebrate armament), and it was wearing a diaper, so we welcomed him into our range, backbone and all.

Because my tackling-expertise had been demonstrated during the duck event I just mentioned, it's strange that I wasn't invited to participate in the project illustrated in the next photo.

The fish range moved several large sharks from their old tanks to shiny new ones.  Jenna and John were there to help out and photodocument.  Some specimens, like the shark above, are just so large that there isn't room to properly or safely house them in Dickinson Hall.  Some of the larger museum specimens, like complete and mounted skeletons, are on display at Powell Hall (the public face of the FLMNH), and some are kept in the large specimen storage facility in another building on campus.  This is a specimen that we have in off-site storage.

Thanks Jeff Gage/Florida Museum for this photo!

This Giant Squid was caught floating on the surface off the coast of Florida.  He is definitely a giant squid, but in this case he is also a Giant Squid, a member of the genus Architeuthis.  It is the first specimen of this genus that we have at the museum.  Because they are a deep water species, and...well...giant, Architeuthis are not often collected.  Once we figure out the logistics of safely preserving and housing such a specimen in a public place, we hope that this squid can one day educate visitors while on exhibit at Powell Hall.

So with all these large specimens coming in and moving around, I'm sure you're wondering how our ethanol supply is holding up.  Well, we had to place an order.

We tag-teamed this order with the fish range, so when we got the call from the delivery guy a group of us all rushed out to unload some ethanol.  This picture, featuring four 55 gallon drums and a bevy of intrepid ethanol-moving-specialists, represents a quarter of that order (and 3/5 of those working on unloading it).

Some ranges have giant specimens that don't require ethanol.  This giant totem pole was moved to a display location on the stairwell.  Because it's very tall, solid wood, and moving to a somewhat awkward location, a Dickinson-wide call went out to recruit assistance.

A whole herd of us wheeled the totem pole outside on a series of carts, then controlled it down a steep hill and around to the back of the museum where we all lifted it and maneuvered it down the hall and into an upright position.  Because I was actually helping, this picture is of the final tweaking of the totem pole into place.  Nothing like risking life, limb, and artifacts to bring a group closer together.

I'll try to get back on a regular posting schedule.  With Gustav on sabbatical you'd think that I'd have a lot more time on my hands, but it turns out that he still has email.

:) Mandy

AAUS Training

In order to dive under the auspices of the University of Florida, divers must undergo training to become AAUS certified Scientific Divers. Art, François, and Nat all needed this training for their future field endeavors. In order to keep your status current you must complete 12 dives a year. Jenna and I had fallen short (way short) so we needed to re-checkout with Cheryl, the Dive Safety Officer (DSO) of UF, so we tagged along on some of their dives one day.

Here are the three trainees (Nartçois) preparing to descend to 100 feet. We were diving in a spring that day and the water was quite cold, so they're all rocking a hood.

Although AAUS certification is not a NAUI-card-having designation of diver, there are several aspects of the training, one of which is to become a Rescue Diver. Below, Jenna plays the role of a tired diver and François gives her a hand with a fin push.

Although it it seems pretty clear from this next picture that François is attempting to drown Nat, he is actually practicing getting them both out of dive gear while towing him to the exit and administering rescue breathing.

Below is a short video of Nat performing the same exercise on Art, either saving his life or drowning him. You be the judge.

Also key to scientific diver training are navigational skills. Here Art and Nat prepare to navigate an underwater square at a depth of 30-40 feet using a compass for direction and a pre-determined number of fin-kicks as the distance.

You know what dive training means...more fieldwork! And hopefully some more blog posts from the field, replete with showy animal photos and calendar-worthy scenery.

:) Mandy

...but we've been really busy

I know it's been way too long since my last update, but just wait till you see all that we've had going on and I hope all will be forgiven.

The Shrimp Mafia has disbanded with Ivan and Sammy returning to their respective countries of origin leaving Art to describe new species on his own. But not to worry, Magali Honey (Maggie) is visiting and will be here for a few weeks. She came just in time, I think that by this point the hotel we use has started factoring our visitors into their monthly budget. Here are Machel and Maggie bonding over talk of barnacles and sea cucumbers.

Also during the month of February, prospective grad students came to visit the department. One of the women who came to interview with our (Gustav's) lab is Christine Ewers. I didn't capture her on film this time (I was sick, another reason for the lack of posts, do you forgive me yet?) but she has been on a R/V Bellows field trip with us in the past. Here are she and Julie patching up a trawl net.

Another new arrival who is here to stay (at least for a few years) is Hsiu-Chin Lin. The newest member of the team, she is joining us a post-doc. She has a lot of genetic expertise that we are anxious to add to our collective knowledge.


In addition to all the arrivals and departures. We also participated in the 2010 UF Marine Biology Symposium. Many of us presented talks or posters of our various and sundry research interests. My data were a mess and needed a lot of time and attention to polish up enough in time to present at the symposium. Other things that I might have been meaning to do (i.e. posting to this blog) may or may not have fallen to the wayside as a consequence, but I'm sure you understand. At the conference, the cuke team swept the undergraduate awards with Julie, Laura, and J.D. all winning prizes. Here is a glimpse of Julie's first place presentation with some nice ossicle pictures. Try and soak in the knowledge.

So in addition the the grant-ending other-work-neglecting catch-up to do, we now have our symposium-readiness other-work-neglecting catch-up to do. Sarah has been doing a lot of cataloging and label matching. Here she is shelving a freshly labeled box of something. This is the shelving where we keep the wet (ethanol preserved) collection. It's not as creepy as the lighting makes it look. You should see the herpetology collection!

Jenna has also been tackling some label matching, but it seems like there's always someone wanting a Geneious tutorial. We've been getting back so much sequence data from the Smithsonian that everyone wants to get to work on building some trees for their study group. One of the latest petitioners is Sea.

Fred has also begun work on his Thailand collection and has spent some time in the range this week sorting through trays of land snails that's he's collected to prepare them for cataloging.

Also doing land snail work, Chelsey and John have been working on the many, many (many, many) lots from Madagascar. Chelsey may be employed full time over in the shark range, but she keeps coming back home to Invert Zoo, feeling the pull of the Acavidae and their messy taxonomy, and possibly the snack drawer and its ever-changing bounty.

I'm also pleased to report that I've made serious inroads into the desk blockade that has been constructed around me. I would say that things are returning to normal, but I realize that I really have no standard for comparison. What can I say, we're a happenin' joint.

:) Mandy