Posts Tagged ‘Diodogorgia’

Well, Now…

Monday, September 6th, 2010

This year’s MACNA, which was in Orlando, is now history, and I feel like I can come up for air.  I was burning the candle at both ends and the middle trying to get my research in order so that I could turn it into a decent talk.  My preparations worked, but as it turned out, the set up at the meeting didn’t work for me. 

The meeting organizers had scheduled me in one of the 4 P. M. slots on Friday last, and I was supposed to have an hour to babble.  However, the previous speaker used up his time and then some by the time the questions were done, and by the time I got going I was shy about 15 minutes.  Then they started to signal me to quit on the hour, so that my talk was effectively truncated (not cut off) at 45 minutes, and I needed about 50.  Sigh.  I collapsed a lot of my slidees into a rapid flowing narrative, and got done, but skipped a bunch of slides, and didn’t have the time I had put in for the “thinking pauses” I had built into the presentation to allow the messages to “sink in.”    There was a take home message of how to care for the animals, and I hope that got across.  I think it did, but…

What I am not sure came across was the absolute novelty of what I was presenting.  EVERY bit of information that I presented was “new to science.”  It is obvious that no other cnidarian feeds in a manner similar to these gorgonians, and that as filter-feeders, their feeding method and behaviors are aslo unique.

Oh well, I can’t go back in time and do it over – and I am not sure I would if I could.  I could certainly blame the meeting organizers for this problem, but that would be very Republican of me, passing the buck in that manner.  I have been giving presentations long enough to know I should have taken my watch off and placed it by my monitor so that I could have taken better care of my time management.  I didn’t.  So, the only person to really blame is myself, so I have been mentally beating myself about the head and shoulders for the last couple of days.  Sigh…  Enough… enough,  enough…

Next…

Tomorrow I will start writing the first manuscript that will result from the data.  I anticipate the actual writing to go relatively fast, but I will also havve to make some different illustrations, and I think they will not be as easy.  I have been thinking about what I am going to write for so long, the actual writing will undoubtedly be anticlimactic.   Given the new, unique, and unexpected nature of my data, I am certain the manuscript will get published… eventually.  The only question is, “What journal will take it?”

Well, time will tell – and so will I. 

I will keep you  posted here.

Until later,

Cheers!!!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

My Diodogorgia Research Update

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

I am in the process of putting together my MACNA 2010 presentation, based wholly on my Diodogorgia experiments, and for the first time incorporating my results after some analyses.

Now, I can’t tell you what I have found, after all that would spoil any little drama there would be at my presentation for anybody who might go through the wrong door and end up in the room where I am giving my presentation.  Based on past numbers, that will be about 3 or so; if I am lucky maybe 5, but certainly no more than 7 or 8 :-( – and that is too bad, too, because this time it will be a really important talk.  The data are good and the results for the aquarium husbandry of many of the octocorals are  profound – truly!   Without any hyperbole at all, I will present the most important talk given at the conference.  I will be giving absolutely “new to the world knowledge” and I will relate it to the care of a large number of animals

Interestingly, it has some equally profound results for the scientific community.  If I can write the thing well enough that it gets accepted in the peer-reviewed literature, it will show a whole new aspect to how some suspension-feeding animals to their suspension feeding. :-)

So…  If you aren’t going to MACNA, you will have to wait for a while, but I will give you a hint,

You have to aim for “the sweet spot” in the care of these animals.

And, husbandry… husbandry…  Why not wifery???

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Good Stuff

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

I have been going from a bare bones, sorta, tank back to something that is an approximation of a natural system.  My aquarium is nothing I would call a reef tank a the present time, more like the emulation of a habitat someplace near a reef.  In other words, no stony corals, yet.  And probably not for a long time.  For the last couple of years my system has mostly been focused on maintaining my research animals.  And it had been an adequate system, as far as it went, it just wasn’t the most aesthetic aquarium of all times.  In fact, it was pretty much the other extreme.  To a large extent, this condition was due to my health problems, which finally seem to be fading a bit.  I simply didn’t have the time to maintain it properly.

So…

I have been in the process of converting my aquarium into a more attractive system designed to maintain and support my research beasties of the present, my Diodogorgia colonies.  Now, like any good scientist, I don’t want to spend any more time than is absolutely necessary in this exercise.  I am NOT one of those aquarium hobbyists who spends all waking hours puttering around his/her system.  Nope.  I want to put the animals in the system, and sit back and enjoy it as I can, relaxing… Not working.

My research has shown that Diodogorgia colonies need strong, and more-or-less laminar currents to feed well.  It just can’t capture prey very well in either particularly slow currents or stagnant situations, nor in strong currents that are irregular, the type of water flow generated by so-called wavemakers, and oscillators.  So I have created a Diodogorgia gully along one side of my system with the wall of the aquarium being one side, and live rock being the other.   At one end of the aquarium, I have three relatively powerful powerheads to create the current.  I can’t, in this situation, use propeller type pumps, because the ones I have create a noise in the tank that irritates my spouse – apparently anywhere in the house (and, it is a noise I can’t hear, sigh…)  .  So…  a compromise, but it seem to be working so far.

Yesterday’s event of notice was the arrival of a shipment of sand bed and “maintenance” critters from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms.  I been periodically purchasing this type of critter from this vendor for over ten years, and other than the fact that some of the animals are misidentified (more about that below), I have nothing but good things to say about the operation.  The animals arrive in good order, ALWAYS.  The animals arrive in labeled bags, ALWAYS.  And the animals are reasonably priced, ALWAYS.   

Yesterday, I got a shipment of “bristle worms” – amphinomids or fire worms, the classic scavengers, some of their “Mama Mia” worms – these are cirratulid worms, not terebellids as it states on the webpage.  See this online article to tell the diffence between the two types of worms.  Nobody in the hobby, as near as I can tell, actually sells terebellids, but many folks misidentify cirratulids as terebellids.  Folks,  the presence of a lot of tentacles isn’t the sole diagnostic characteristic for a terebellid, those tentacles have to arise from a specific body region and the whole worm has to have the proper morphology.   Similarly with the cirratulids.  These two types of worms are NOT hard to tell apart. 

This is one of the cirratulids I got from IPSF. They do well in a good sand bed and are great detritivores.

I also got some mini-stars, small brittle stars, and some of the the “miracle mud,” some sediment containing real microscopic sediment critters, as a recharge for my sand bed.  This latter stuff is what live sand should be when it is sold, but other than IPSF, I don’t know of any vendor that actually sells it.

Finally, I finished off my order with some good grazing snails, three of the Trochus IPSF sells, and an order of grazing columbellids.  Although IPSF calls the latter Strombus maculata, they are clearly not a strombid.  However, that misidentification doesn’t get in the way of their grazing abilities, which are truly awesome.  These little snails are probably a species of Euplica, but that is really not important.  And here is an article that discusses the differences between the columbellids and the conchs (= strombids).  Again, they are not hard to tell apart, and the columbellids are really the best grazing snails in the business; additionally, they survive far better in reef tanks than do strombids.

This is one of the columbellids added to my system. See the linked article for differences between these animals and conchs (strombid snails).

Finally, and the thing that makes IPSF a REALLY great place to buy from, is that all of this stuff is aquacultured.  They raise it all.  YES!!!!  A marine aquarium animal vendor that is doing business like it should be done.   I had a heck of a good time yesterday adding all of these animals and a few other things, some algae, besides to my tank.

Until later,

Cheers.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

And, So It Goes…

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

The Diodogorgia feeding experiment ”saga” continues.   Yesterday, I did the first two sets of supplemental experimental feeding observations.  I made about 90 movies watching polyps under both 16 cm/sec and 24 cm/sec laminar flow currents.   I did about 45 movies under each speed, and I hope that they show some good captures or attempts, and such.  I think they did, but it is really hard to tell by watching on the view screen of my little camera as I am taking the pictures.

Today, I will be duplicating the effort, but I will use turbulent flows.  Getting all of these data is great, but of course, it does – in one sense – slow me down, as I have to process and analyze all the movies.  That involves adjusting the brightness and contrast, if I can, to make viewing easier.  Also, I label the movies and such, so that I won’t make mistakes about what I am watching.  With over 500 movies, it is easy for my feak and weeble mind to get confused on occasion.  And then I have to analyze them for actual content.  Gonna take a while!!!

Still and all, even though this sets me back a bit on my schedule, it really is of no consequence – because the schedule is all of my own making.  I want to have the best project I can have, given some reasonable constraints of cost, time, and effort, and these new movies certainly help correct some early errors.   I took the original movies under these conditions as the first ones for this aspect of the project, and I really didn’t know how many I needed nor under orientations were best.   After looking at movies from all the other speeds, I have  a really honed appreciation of what I need.  I just hope that these will fit the bill.  

Doing this aspect of the project was an interesting process.  Initially, I had no intention of working on the question of exactly how do the animals captured their food.  The primary question was simply, “Was there a difference in the rate of capture between animals in laminar flow and turbulent flow situations?”  Additionally, I thought it would be interesting to see if the differences, if any, changed as the velocity of the current changed, so there was the additional question, “Was there a difference in the prey capture rates between animals in laminar and turbulent flows at different current velocities?”  These were questions driven by animal husbandry concerns; primarily, “What does a marine aquarist have to do to maintain these or similar animals in good conditions in an aquarium?”

In the process of doing those experiments, I thought it would be useful to have some movies of Diodogorgia polyps capturing Artemia, simply as visual aids for presentations.   However, once I had a couple of good movies of prey capture, the REAL question became evident:  Just How DO Diodogorgia polyps capture prey?  Frankly, the question actually has a much larger significance, because when I was reading references about gorgonian feeding, it became evident that the process was really a “black box” phenomenon. 

People have done experiments – a very few – about feeding in gorgonians, and have found feeding rates for some species, but there is no general model of how the polyps actually work to catch prey.  There are some data and ideas for other octocorals, primarily the lumpy leather corals, such as Sinularia and Alcyonium, but nothing for gorgonians such as Diodogorgia, where the polyps have to be projected up into the currents.  In most of the previous experiments, it simply is assumed that the polyps work to capture food, no thought seems to be given to the processes involved. 

And, if you think of it, prey capturing in such a small animal under the normal conditions it encounters has to be an amazing process.  The animal has to encounter the prey item, assess it, and capture it all the while in a strong (relative to the size of the polyp) current.   If you consider the dimensions of a small – tiny even - gorgonian polyp, and how long it takes a food particle (a tasty zooplankter, or a yummy particle of bacterial goo) to pass through the space around the polyp, all of the decisions about the food capture have to be made in small factions of a second.  All by an animal with no brain and, at best, a rudimentary nervous system.

This is really neat stuff, I think.  

When I get all done, I hope I have done a good enough job at this project that the people who review and read my work, think it is a neat project as well.

Until sometime later,

Cheers,

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Of Course…

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

It was going too well; my Diodogorgia research that is.  I am just about done with the original set of feeding movies.  I am in the last batch, those where the animals were feeding in currents of 24 cm/sec.  And I am not finding any feeding events on the films.  I did pretty well at the lower velocities, but at 16 cm/sec and 24 cm/sec, the animals just do not seem to be feeding at all.

The do seem to be shaking a lot more than they should.  These two “movie runs” were done early in my project and, I suspect, I didn’t have the colonies oriented properly in the chambers resulting in too much vibration and that, in turn, meant that the didn’t feed much.  Here is one of the few good feeding episodes that I managed to capture.  It is a big movie and takes a while to load, please have patience. :-)

Nauplius Capture at 16 cm per second, Laminar Flow

Fortunately, I just ordered two more Diodogorgia colonies, I was going to set them up to try to keep them in my reef tank.  They arrived yesterday.  So, I think I will be cutting one of them down to the size that fits into my apparatus, and I will be doing another couple of experimental runs.  If all goes well, I will be able to complete the movie making within a couple of days, but the evaluation and analysis will take several weeks. 

ARRRGH!!!!  I thought I was getting done with this part of it!!!! 

Oh well, at least I can remedy the problem.

Eye candy

The bird below is a western tanager.  They normally live in the mountains around here, and we get them at our feeders as transients when they are migrating though.  This year, for some wonderful reason, probably shelled peanuts in one feeder, they have stayed.  I counted 12 males in one feeding aggregation a couple of days ago.

Western Tanager male on the roof of a feeder out my office window in Wilsall, Montana.

Until next time,

Cheers,

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Brief Updates/Diodogorgia research

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Since my last post I have been working intensively on examining the videos for my research project on Diodogorgia feeding. This has really been a HOOT!!!  Lotsa fun!

I am actually getting data!  What I never let on was that there was always a possibility that I would have no useable data from the videos.  After all these were taken by a very “jury-rigged” apparatus.  Well, judging from what I have seen so far (and as of yesterday, I had looked at 89 videos), it must have been a pretty good jury, indeed, that did the rigging.  The images are surprisingly clear, and I am being able to see all that I want/need to see.  Not only that, but I also am getting enough instances of the polyps capturing prey that I should be able to do some pretty good statistics about the process.  Of course, the caveat at this time, is that I have only examined in detail those captures at the 2 cm/sec current velocity.  I still have 4 cm/sec (which I will start looking at today), 8 cm/sec, 16 cm/sec, 24 cm/sec and 32 cm/sec.  However, given that I used the same technique to make videos for all of them, I don’t a priori see any reason why I should not be getting good images from those speeds.

Incidentally, I took a lot of trial recordings at the 24 cm/sec current conditions before I took the slower ones, and made sure the video techniques worked for those higher velocities.  So… I really don’t foresee any problems with the videos, themselves. 

Of course, the videos may show that my hypothesis is not valid – but, I think if that is the case, they will show that clearly and unambiguously. :-)

I am pushing to get these videos to be looked at ASAP, so that I can start on the statistics and subsequently the writing of the final articles – including my presentation at MACNA 2010.    However, the most important target is one or more articles for the peer-reviewed professional press.  I think it will be a real coup to be able to publish something in a good journal, and to be able to say in the Acknowledgements section that the work was NOT done at any university and was NOT supported by any federal $$$.  

I will not post any of the actual feeding videos for the time being.  I haven’t yet discovered a way to internally label the videos, and without some things like ”arrows” to point out what is happening, they don’t seem to show much.   If I find the time to dissect a movie and put labels and titles in it, I will defiitely post it.

Facebook

I have  deleted my facebook account.  I am not really sure what I expected when I set up an account there a year or so ago, but whatever it was, didn’t happen.  It didn’t develop into something that I found useful or terribly enjoyable, so given the probems with Facebook’s privacy issues, etc., it seemed prudent to bail.   If anybody who reads this, also was a Facebook “friend,”  – -  Well… Sorry about that.   Really, the bottom line is that I guess I am simply too antisocial for the facebook milieu.

Just a short note this morning, so until later…

Cheers!!!!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Diodogorgia Research Progress!!

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

Finally!!  After about two years of somewhat diligent work (slowed by bouts of various illnesses), I have finished the primary editing of all of the movies I have made during the experimental flow chamber phases of my Diodogorgia nodulifera research.  That means I examined about 970 files, including over 32 Gbytes of movies.  Next, – and probably within a week – I will start actually quantitatively looking at the movies and enumerating how the animals feed in various current regimes and various velocities.

 Artemia Entrapment And Capture Slowed Down

In this movie, watch how a Artemia, or brine shrimp, nauplius is captured and eaten by a single polyp of a small Diodogorgia colony.  The movie’s speed is slowed to only 1/4th normal, so that the food capture will be clearly visible.  Note how the tenacles move.  Note the motion of other particles in the water flow.  And realize when you look at this that each polyp under natural conditions probably has to consume between 4 and 10 naupliar-sized objects each day-every day to survive.

The above movie gives an idea of what I will be seeing with all of these movies, albeit it is a bit clearer than most of the actual research footage.  I will watch where the Artemia (baby brine shrimp – the small orange blob in the movie) enters the polyp’s crown of tentacles, and where it implacts the tentacle(s) that it hits.  Then I will also watch what the tentacle does and the trajectory of the nauplius.  Finally, I will note whether or not the nauplius is eaten.

Then I will compare similar actions across all current velocities tested: 2 cm, 4 cm, 8 cm, 16 cm, 24 cm and 32 cm per second, in both laminar flow and turbulent flow.  I expect to be able to describe the most efficient means of food capture by the gorgonian.  Then I will be able to propose a protocol to maintain these animals – and perhaps some other azooxanthellate soft corals –  in an aquarium.  Also, such information will be useful in determining the animals food under natural conditions.

The enumeration should go pretty rapidly, he says… probably foolishly.  In any case I hope to have a lot, if not all, of these data gathered by late summer so that  I may use these data for my talk at MACNA 2010, in Orlando, this coming September.

Until next time,

Cheers, Ron

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off