Euprymna scolopes

What is your favorite marine animal??


Euprymna scolopes is a small (to just 35 mm ml) sepiolid squid endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. While nocturnal like other sepiolids, it is unusual in that it ranges into very shallow water just 2-4 cm deep. Most other sepiolids are found in relatively deep water.

E. scolopes can be found at night nearshore over sand flats by wading with a light or lantern or snorkeling with a dive light. During the day it buries itself in the sand. When it emerges from the sand it keeps a "sand coat" on its dorsal surface which is presumed to give it camouflage when attacking prey. The sepiolid is relatively short-lived, just 3-10 months from egg to its semelparous death. Eggs are 2.0 mm in diameter and laid on the undersides of coral ledges in shallow water. Paralarvae grow very fast; Hanlon et al. (1997) found E. scolopes to breed and lay eggs in the laboratory just 2 months after hatching from the egg. Juveniles are frequently found with adults in shallow water. Adults are sometimes trawled offshore in mid-water in depths to 138 fathoms. They have been reared in the laboratory on live shrimp in Hawaii and on mysids at Woods Hole.

It has been proposed that E. scolopes can become an easily-reared cephalopod for laboratory research projects. Numerous laboratory studies have been done researching its symbiotic bacterium Vibrio fischeri which lives in the sepiolid's light organ to produce a weak light under the body of the animal. This gives it counter-shading and camouflage from predators.

Celebrating

The last day of spring semester is today, and we got our grades in populations biology.

*drumroll*

I got a B+!! I was going to be happy with a C, but I got an 89% on the final and one hundred on the project and my field notes. I read the text, well, almost never. I pulled it out at the end there with hard work. I'm proud, and if that counts as bragging, I don't care.

I also got an A in archery and bowling, an A+ in my teaching class, and probably an A+ or very high in anthropology. I call this semester a success, probably my favorite, and the beginning of the rest of my schooling since I know what path I am finally on.

Now it's time to relax and enjoy me some free time this summer.

:O)

Biology on the Brain

You know you think too much about biology when you walk by a car whose plate starts with HAR and the first thing you think of? Hardy-Weinberg.

Bivalve and commensalism with a crab (or a mite and mammal hair)

Predator-prey and asymmetrical predator prey

Ah! Don't forget mutualism and asymmetrical mutualism.
When two organisms do well together but okay apart, but one gets more dependent on the other.

K=carrying capacity in the ecosystem and the niche and resources it uses
It can't go above K. Period. Sometimes a species can outcompete another- Case 1 or 2 depending on your graph. Or they are at equilibrium whether it's stable (case 4) or not (case 3).

T. confusum vs. T. castanaeum (beetles that do well depending on hot/humid or cold/dry). The part in the middle they're both doing alright.


....

I'm done.

Fall Semester

General Botany
Intro to Physics
Invertebrate Zoology
Statistics


16 units and class all day Monday and Wednesday.

Do I think I can handle it? Yes. Can I wait? No.

To Do

Bio 52 (Botany)
Bio 56 (Invertebrate Zoology)
Bio 5 (Intro to Molecular Biology)
Bio 23+L (Micro and lab)
Chem 22 (General Chem II)
Chem 75A (Organic chem)
Phys 5-20A-20B (Physics intro and physics for scientists)
Comm. Studies 4 (Small Groups Dynamics/gen ed course)
Math 60 (Calculus with Apps)

So much to do, so little time...

I want to take Bio 52, 55, COMSTD 4, and Chem 22 this fall semester. Am I insane or what??

(I'm so bad at titles)

Okay, time for some recent goings-on.

I got to "teach" a class this last Thursday. My mentor teacher offered to let me, and it was great. I did a lecture on adaptation and then a game with spoons, clothespins, and beans. They seemed to have fun, and I even got a compliment from one of the boys in her fifth period. Then at work yesterday one of the ladies in the bakery tells me her daughter was in my mentor's sixth period. I knew that girl was familiar. She told her mom she had fun, too. I got compliments from the kids. That made me feel great. So did being up there in front of the class. Man, I can't believe it took me this long to figure out I want to be teacher. I almost am too impatient about getting there now.

School is almost over, woo-hoo! I got accepted to the CCI at UCR. So did this guy in my education class so I get to know someone there. I'm so excited about that, too. One of the checkers at work today asked about my mold (she didn't want to say fungus, and I didn't realize why until just now). That was nice, and it's going alright. We think we ID'd everything and are now formulating the paper and a way to put our samples in cases for future mycologists. Except I was looking at the temp and humidity data for this area, and I don't see any reason that the fungi seemed to be mostly dead April 11 and then come back April 18. Then I was thinking about the dew point and how that might mean more than humidity. The two are connected, though. April 11 had the lowest average humidity, which means a lower dew point. It was also more stable that week, which is good for fungi growth. Who knows. I'' try and discuss it with my friend on Monday.

In other news, I love Armin's new album Imagine. In his song with Jennifer Rene she actually sounds good. I like that it is more vocal trance.

The Random Pile in Organismal Classification

"Greek protiston -a meaning the (most) first of all ones, are a diverse group of organisms, comprising those eukaryotes that cannot be classified in any of the other eukaryotic kingdoms as fungi, animals, or plants. They are usually treated as the kingdom Protista or Protoctista."

--Wikipedia

Sometimes a picture is enough

"And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in gray
And the sun will set for you."


I've had this song from Linkin Park stuck in my head the whole day. I thought of the words as I hiked to keep my distracted from the distance, wind, and slope. I really like their new album, even though it is a different style.

I'm tired though and have to work in forty minutes. I smell like some tree, and it's bugging because I don't know what part of me does. Probably my hair because my friend and I crawled through bushes and trees. There were some good fungi samples. Unfortunately, there was also a snake. It looked like the one I came about ten inches from as I crawled over a log earlier. She yelled, and I was afraid to come down from the log. What a long and disappointing day, though.

Peace for now. I'll update later

And a side note

I have been studying for my population bio exam tomorrow, and after thinking over everything and reading and rewriting my notes, all I can say is:

I so love biology.

:O)

Maybe it's just me, but...

...this episode of NOVA I'm watching has this very cool dinosaur, which no one can agree on. Was it really a dino? How did it fly? Did it glide? What where the purpose of the back limb feathers? How awesome.


Microraptor ("small thief") is a genus of small, dromaeosaurid dinosaur. About two dozen well-preserved fossil specimens have been recovered from Liaoning, China. They date from the early Cretaceous Period (Barremian stage), 130-125.5 million years ago. Two species have been named, M. zhaoianus and M. gui. It has recently been suggested that all of the specimens belong to a single species, which is properly called M. zhaoianus. Cryptovolans, another four-winged dromaeosaur, may also be a species of Microraptor.^[1]

Like Archaeopteryx, Microraptor provides important evidence about the evolutionary relationship between birds and dinosaurs. Microraptor had long pennaceous feathers that form wing-like surfaces on the arms and tail but also, surprisingly, on the legs. This led Xu (2003) to describe it as a "four winged dinosaur", and to speculate that it may have glided using all four limbs for lift." - Wikipedia

Lichen and mold and fungus, oh my

This isn't my picture, but this does look exactly like some fungus that my project partner and I found in Day Canyon on Friday. It's supposed to grow from July through November, but it's almost April... Anyway, it grows on dead wood, which is where we found it. It looks like shells kind of. Pretty cool, eh?

I also realized that this indeed was where Jon and I first hiked to that one day. It was our forest. At least, it used to be a forest. Once my partner and I reached the gauging station and sat there, I realized I didn't recognize it initially because of the fires and debris flow that destroyed the area. I saw it when it was still a forest. I think it is very cool how I hiked there as a kid and am now studying there as an adult for my biology class.

no title

Things to do in the near future

1. Take and pass the CBEST (first try is in April)
2. Go out into nature, observe, and think of questions
3. Get my granddad's old camera working (top of the line in the 70s)
4. Return the Xbox to my store
5. Get camping stuff for my bio weekend trips

Yeah. I have goals, man. :-D