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Published on Leave a comment on Life (and death) at the shore

Still more or less under quarantine shutdown due to COVID19, I haven't been doing much outdoor stuff over the past several months. What with the pandemic and horrid air quality due to wildfires throughout the state, spending time in places I would normally like to hang out simply hasn't been possible. We're still getting too many out-of-the-area visitors for me to feel comfortable being around people, and weekends are especially bad. But last weekend I went to Moss Landing to take pictures of birds and other wildlife—I needed visual aids for a virtual lab my students will be doing in a few weeks.

It's the time of year for birdwatchers to get excited about winter visitors. I've had golden-crowned sparrows in the canyon behind the house for almost a month now, but I hadn't been down to a beach in a while. Moss Landing is a great place for birdwatching, because you can explore the estuarine habitat of Elkhorn Slough, the sandy beach, and the harbor during a 2-mile walk. That's three distinct habitats for very little effort!

Starting at the tidal marsh, I always keep an eye out for the long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus). They have the largest beak-to-head ratio of any bird.

Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus) in salt marsh
Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus)
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

One of my favorite winter visitors to the marsh area is the willet (Tringa semipalmata). Unlike most shorebirds that are speckled or mottled, willets in winter plumage are a beautiful soft gray-ish brown color. Every time I see a willet I ask myself, "Willet, or won't it?"

Willets in marsh at low tide
Willets (Tringa semipalmata)
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

And when they take off in flight, willets show these striking black and white wing patterns. They always take me by surprise, even though I know to expect it.

Willet in flight, showing white flashes on wings
Willet (Tringa semipalmata) in flight
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

A whole flock of willets taking off at once is quite an impressive sight!

Flock of willets in flight
Willets (Tringa semipalmata) in flight
2018-11-14
© Allison J. Gong

From the marsh it's a short walk over the dune and onto the beach.

I always look forward to walking this beach because of the dead things. Don't get me wrong, the living things are fun to see, but in some ways the dead critters can be more informative. For every species there is always some baseline level of mortality in the ocean, so you expect a certain number of dead things to wash up. However, an unusually high number of corpses could indicate that something is going on at sea. This trip I didn't see very many dead critters: just a few grebes that had been there for a while, nothing out of the ordinary.

Oh, and an otter pup. At least, I'm pretty certain it was an otter.

Yes, we came across a dead sea otter pup, my first ever.

Dead sea otter pup on the beach
Dead southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) on the beach
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

The body was missing a head, but the parts that remain were a bit longer than my booted foot. Although most of the soft tissue had been scavenged, the carcass had distinct paws, meaning it wasn't any kind of pinniped (seal or sea lion). Also, pinnipeds don't have fur like this, as they rely on blubber for thermoregulation. Sea otters, on the other hand, have the densest fur of all mammals, with the oft-cited 1 million hairs/in2.

But let's be honest. I like the beach because I like photographing birds, and there is always interesting bird life at this beach. I'm not one of the crazy bird people who keep a life list and need to be the first person to spot a particular something-or-other. And, unlike the idiots I saw tramping through the pickleweed in pursuit of a Say's phoebe that day, I don't climb over fences and trespass where I'm not supposed to be. Besides, even the everyday backyard birds are fun to watch. Whoever says that familiarity breeds contempt certainly is not a naturalist!

And who doesn't love a snowy plover or two?

Snowy plovers (Charadrius nivosus)
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

The snowies aren't nesting at this time of year so the upper part of the beach isn't roped off. They do still get disturbed by people wandering around, who probably don't even know the birds are there. They (the snowies, that is) are so tiny that when they hunker down behind a divot in the sand they disappear completely. If you sit or stand quietly, they will pop up and make short dashes from hillock to pile of beach wrack and back again, feeding on the insects and crustaceans they find.

In addition to the snowy plovers, another tiny "peep" bird runs around on the beaches, often in large groups. These are the sanderlings, Calidris alba. I've only ever seen them in nonbreeding plumage, as they nest in the high Arctic.

Sanderlings (Calidris alba)
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

Sanderlings are the little birds that run back and forth from the waves. As a wave recedes the sanderlings frantically stab their stout beaks into the sand, grabbing up small mole crabs and other crustaceans that are right at the surface. When the next wave arrives the sanderlings run back up the beach. They have short legs and don't swim, so getting swept out to sea would be a very bad thing for them.

Sometimes even the long-legged shorebirds forage on the beach. I've seen the curlew there, as well as whimbrels and godwits. This day the godwits were stealing the show.

Marbled godwits (Limosa fedoa)
2020-10-10
© Allison J. Gong

The godwits, with their longer legs, are able to stand their ground when the waves wash up. They can catch food that is buried more deeply into the sand. On mudflats they pick their way over the flat at low tide, digging for worms, clams, and crustaceans. They can feed on a mudflat only at low tide. But on the beach they can feed at any time, just moving with the tide as it floods and ebbs.

And my friend the long-billed curlew was there on the beach, too!

Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus)
2020-10-10
©Allison J. Gong

The curlews are not as eager to forage in the waves themselves as the godwits seem to be. The curlews might wander down to where their ankles are swashed by the waves, but do not seem to like getting wetter than that. But that bill can probe very deeply into the sand or mud. I've watched them feeding on mole crabs on the beach, and on worms on the mudflats.

Autumn and winter are good times to watch birds around here. There's a bit of a lull in bird activity once the swallows leave depart for the south and before the winter residents show up. For me, autumn begins when the golden-crowned sparrows arrive in the neighborhood, which this year was September 25. I'm listening to them now as I write this! Being located on the Pacific Flyway means we get lots of birds resting for a bit on their migration even if they don't winter here. I'll try to get out to Moss Landing during the winter months, to keep track of the avian comings and going.

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Published on 1 Comment on A Walk in the Mountains

Another guest blog entry by my husband, Alex Johnson

22 September 2020
Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana

Thirty four years ago I worked as a seasonal employee in Glacier National Park. My first job - and my most favorite - was Information Desk Clerk. I found I loved sharing my enthusiasm for the park with all the other visitors.

However, as with any job, it wasn’t always rosy. One of my tasks was to book trips for the famous open-top Red Bus tours. Of course being in the mountains, the weather wasn’t always cooperative. (We had snow in the park on the 4th of July both seasons I worked there!) On those days I would often hear from disappointed passengers: “We couldn’t see anything”, or “It was cold and rainy the whole day”, they’d complain.

I never fully understood this. Of course I know that some of the grand vistas can be obscured and the postcard-blue skies are hidden at these times. But in my experience, some of the most magical and transcendent moments happen during mountain storms, and particularly as those storms clear. The clouds dance amongst the peaks, the waterfalls come alive, the colors become vivid, and the wind sings. And the light can be incredible. Yes, it can be cold and sometimes uncomfortable, but when the storms clear, there’s no describing it.

Today I was back in Glacier again, this time alone. I’ve been back only twice since my employee days, and that hasn’t been nearly enough. It was one of those stormy days, with a steady rain and slate grey skies. It wasn’t too cold (for September), there was very little wind, and the clouds were doing their dances through the peaks. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to take a hike on the Highline Trail out to Haystack Pass and back, a walk of about 8 miles. The Highline is a spectacular trail, starting at Logan Pass and traversing for miles along a gigantic glacial arête know as the Garden Wall all the way to Canada.

The walk out was beautiful, if a bit wet. I took my time, looking for sheep and mountain goats, and pausing to take lots of pictures. At Haystack Pass, I stopped to have a bite to eat. There’s not really any shelter there, so by the time I was finished I was starting to get cold. My fingers were suffering most, and were pretty well numb by the time I got going again. However, with a vigorous start to the hike back and keeping my hands in my pockets for a while, I gradually warmed up.

As I went along, the rain started to intensify and a chilly wind began to blow down from the Garden Wall above me. I picked up my pace, both to stay warm and to hasten my return. Then, after some 20 minutes, the clouds started to loose their grey, the wind began to die down, and the sun started to peek through the clouds above Mt. Oberlin to the west.

As the sun started to shine through the trees in front of me, an image of my best friend from those Glacier days, Chis Wall, came into my mind.

Chris was the Front Desk manager at East Glacier Lodge where I worked, and was technically my boss. However, he an I hit it off and did lots of hiking and climbing together. After Glacier, Chris went on to work at Sequoia National Park with his girlfriend Ellen (whom he also met in Glacier). I visited them there several times. One summer they managed the Bearpaw Meadow High Sierra Camp, and I hiked in the 11 miles to spend a week with them. I kept in contact with Chris and Ellen for number of years. I even recall traveling to Tuscon for their wedding. Later, they moved back to Massachusetts where Chis was from, and we fell out of touch.

Some time ago I ran across Chris’ obituary online. He had died too young of brain cancer, I believe.

When the sun came out today, I remembered another time like this, with Chris singing the Beatles song, Here Comes the Sun.

“Here comes the sun, doot-n-do-do. Here comes the sun….”

I could picture him, with his infectious grin, his happy voice, the bandana he always wore on his head, as well as his hit out-of-tune singing. I could even see the four tube socks he wore with his hiking boots, two on each foot, none of which matched any other. (This was a particular point of pride with him.)

The rains stopped. The air warmed. The clouds danced and swirled. The waterfalls came alive. The colors were vivid. And the light was incredible.

It was a perfect day for a walk in the mountains.

Thanks for meeting me up there again today, old friend.

Published on Leave a comment on Upcoming talk

In this strange pandemic school year with classes online and student clubs not able to meet in person, the Natural History Club has been meeting virtually twice a week. We can't go out as a group on any field trips, so the students have been sharing their nature journals online. Yesterday we played Jeopardy! I didn't win, but I didn't embarrass myself, either.

Last spring I was scheduled to give a tidepool talk as an event for the club. The talk was scheduled for mid-March, exactly the time when COVID19 arrived and threw all plans into the blender. The good news is I get to give the talk virtually next month, as the first event of the year. Please come!

Here's the link to register for the Zoom meeting: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tc-ChpjMrHdVEvjcsu3v31IjD1M3lK8aI

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Published on 1 Comment on False nightfall

California has been burning for almost a month now. Wildfires rage up and down the state, and it seems that new ones pop up every day. I haven't bothered looking up the latest stats on acreage destroyed because, frankly, it would be too depressing. All across social media today people posted photos of orange skies that made everything and everyone look kind of sick. The photo above was taken at 17:10 this afternoon, a full two hours before sunset.

There's a thick layer of smoke blanketing most of California for weeks now. Over the Labor Day weekend the smoky conditions combined with a record-breaking heat wave and made for widespread misery. Fortunately for those of us on the coast, the marine layer returned yesterday and brought cooler temperatures. The marine layer creeping in from the ocean is also acting as a buffer between the smoke and us, keeping air quality at ground level pretty nice. People even a few miles more inland from us are still suffering from dreadful air quality.

The double layer of fog and thick smoke has resulted in the twilight we've had all day. I noticed that the wildlife responded to these unusual conditions.

  • The cats have been sleeping more than usual, even for cats. They've been sleeping like we're near the winter solstice rather than on the sunny side of the autumn equinox. And I've also been very sleepy all day. Like the cats, it feels like mid-December to me, too.
  • Hummingbirds—During the heat wave they didn't visit our feeders much, I think they were trying to shelter out of the heat. Yesterday and today they were feeding frantically. They normally visit the feeders occasionally throughout the day, and in the hour before and after sunset they tank up before going into torpor for the night. The hummers and all of the other diurnal birds have gone to bed a good two hours before sunset.
  • Insects—The nighttime cricket serenade is going full-strength. They normally don't start up until full dark. Tonight they've started a good few hours earlier.

None of us knows how many days like this we'll have before the skies clear again. It is very unsettling, to say the least. Now imagine the same kind of thing, only more pronounced and lasting for decades or centuries, as would have occurred during periods of extreme volcanic activity in Earth's history. After today it's a little easier to understand at a gut level what I already knew at an intellectual level, that severe levels of atmospheric smoke and dust can change the biota: if the sun never gets brighter than it did today then plants would die, resulting in altered community structure.

As I finish up this post, it is now about the time that the sun should be setting, and it has been full dark for well over an hour now. Feels like bedtime!

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Published on 2 Comments on Fire Breaks

Today's report was written by a guest blogger, Alex Johnson, who also happens to be my husband.

26 August 2020

In the late afternoon last Saturday, the wind shifted and we got our first breaths of fresh air all week. We even saw actual clouds and blue sky for the first time in 5 days! Also fortunately, the thunderstorms predicted over the weekend bypassed us, and since then the weather has been much more cooperative for the firefighters: our marine layer came back (which at least helps in the lower elevations near the coast), the winds have been relatively calm, and the temperatures have been more moderate.

We no longer have ash and burnt vegetation falling continuously from the sky. Only sporadic ash fall now. However this morning the smoke came back, so our air quality is terrible again.

Finally, the fire crews were able to construct fire lines over the weekend to protect our area of town. Two lines were constructed. The primary line runs from Wilder Ranch at Highway 1 up to the far upper reaches of the UCSC campus (at Twin Gates) and then down to Highway 9 south of Felton. A secondary line runs through private land between the Moore Creek Preserve and Wilder Ranch up to Empire Grade Road just south of the west entrance to the UCSC campus.

Yesterday I took a hike to have a look at the secondary break. Here's what I saw:

  • 1 - Fire break at UCSC campus, looking southwest.
  • 2 - Fire break from Moore Creek Preserve, looking southwest.
  • 3 - Fire break from Moore Creek Preserve, looking north.
  • 4 -Fire break from Moore Creek Preserve, looking southwest.
  • 5 - Fire break from Moore Creek Preserve, looking north toward UCSC.

In the areas I took a look at, they used bulldozers to widen existing ranch roads (dirt), to about 50 feet in width. While digitizing the lines on the map, I noticed that the firefighters appeared to do this where ever possible. In other areas it was evident they had to cut through heavy timber/brush.

Needless to say, with these fire breaks in and the improved weather, we are feeling very much relieved and more secure. We still have our bags packed and are ready to leave, however.

Also because I'm a mapping geek I created my own web maps, pulling together data from various sources so I can keep track of what's happening. It includes these photos, the fire breaks, evacuation areas, and other info I've found useful. The maps above came from those web maps, so here's a link if you'd like to explore:

The situation remains fluid, but at least the weather is cooperating for now. The breaks that have been established are protecting both the city of Santa Cruz and the UC Santa Cruz campus. Smoke in the air remains a problem, and air quality has ranged from not-too-bad to don't-breathe-if-you-have-to-go-outside. Still, at least we aren't likely to have to evacuate any time soon.

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Published on 2 Comments on Destruction and resilience

22 August 2020

Scorched tanoak (Neolithocarpus densiflorus) leaves

As I write these words, a massive and powerful wildfire is raging through the Santa Cruz Mountains, approaching the city of Santa Cruz from the north and west. This morning's stats:

  • 63,000 acres burnt/burning
  • 5% containment
  • 1157 people fighting the fire (roughly 10% of what is needed to fight a fire of this size)
  • firebreaks constructed to protect the city and university
  • firefighters coming from out of the area and out of state

Much of the terrain burning is redwood forest. Big Basin Redwood State Park has burnt extensively. All park buildings and campgrounds have been severely damaged if not destroyed. Up the coast from me at Waddell Creek, the fire burned all the way to the ocean. Rancho del Oso, the nature center at the bottom of Big Basin at Waddell Creek, is in the middle of the forest; I don't know whether or not it still stands.

Each of these leaves tells the story of the destructive power of Nature. Most of them are from tanoak trees (Neolithocarpus densiflorus) or California bay laurel (Umbellularia californica), both of which are very common understory trees in redwood forests. For the past week, charred leaves have been tossed by updraft and carried along the wind, to be deposited miles away. Fortunately they are no longer acting as live embers when they touch down.

My camera gear is all packed up, in case we need to evacuate. I took these photos with my phone when I went to the marine lab this morning. They are completely unaltered. If they look a little too orange, well, that's how everything looks right now.

Why did I feel compelled to take these pictures? I think it's because the damage to Nature caused by Nature should be acknowledged as well as the damage to human lives, homes, and health. What I'm about to say may sound insensitive. I do not want to diminish the human tragedy of lost homes, livelihoods, and health. But I do want to shift my personal focus a little bit, because dwelling on all that has been and could be lost only renders me unable to function. If I can think about the future, perhaps even the long-term future far beyond my own life, I feel more grounded and ready to deal with the now.

What is and has been happening to the redwood forests is absolutely tragic. But the redwoods themselves are fire-adapted and resilient. The forest will recover. Already there are Facebook groups organizing to help the residents who have been displaced, begin the long and arduous process of cleaning up once the fire crews give the okay to do so, and start thinking about long-term monitoring of the forest's recovery. From a purely ecological perspective, it will be fascinating to document the process of secondary succession.

But before any of that can happen, human safety is the top priority. We are far from the end of this ordeal. While the weather has cooperated the past couple of days, with cooler temperatures and higher humidity thanks to the return of the marine layer, the forecast calls for 20-30% chance of lightning weather Sunday through Tuesday. That means more lightning strikes and more fires starting. We were visited by a firefighter yesterday afternoon, who told us that while we were not in the immediate evacuation zone we need to be ready to go. She advised us to do the usual fire prevention stuff—clear out a defensible space around the house, make sure there's no leaf litter or debris on the roof, etc. So we did. And now we stay indoors as much as possible, as the air quality outside is dismal. And we wait.

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Published on 5 Comments on In Memoriam

On the afternoon of July 31, 2020 the world of invertebrate biology and marine ecology in California lost a giant in our field. Professor Emeritus John S. Pearse died after battling cancer and the aftereffects of a stroke.

John Pearse in the intertidal at Soquel Point
2017-05-28
© Allison J. Gong

John was one of the very first people I met when I came to UC Santa Cruz. Before we moved here, my husband and I came and met with John, who was not my official faculty sponsor but agreed to show us around so we could check out different areas for a place to live. In fact, I had applied to the department to do my graduate work in John's lab, but because he was considering retirement the department wouldn't let him take on a new Ph.D. student. But when we needed some help getting acquainted with Santa Cruz, John and his wife, Vicki Buchsbaum Pearse, graciously let us stay at their house and spent a day driving us around town and showing us eateries as well as potential neighborhoods.

By happenstance we ended up living down the hill from John and Vicki. We had met their blue duck, Lily, and I used to fill spaghetti sauce jars with snails from our tiny yard and trudge up the hill to feed them to her. She gobbled them up like they were her favorite treat.

As one of the regional experts in invertebrate biology, John was on all of my graduate committees. There were always a half-dozen or so of us grad students working with invertebrates, and we all tended to hang out together. John was one of the things we shared in common. And even if he wasn't technically on one's committee, he would always be available for consultation or advice as needed.

When John retired, he didn't leave the campus. He remained a presence at the marine lab, and still did field work. He started incorporating young students in his long-term intertidal monitoring research, which morphed into the LiMPETS project. The combination of working with students while producing robust scientific data was the perfect distillation of John's legacy. He said this about LiMPETS:

This is one of the best things I could ever do to enhance science education and conservation of our spectacular coastline. Working with teachers and their students is a wonderful and fulfilling experience.

John S. Pearse, Professor Emeritus
UC Santa Cruz

The last time I saw John was in the summer of 2019, during his annual Critter Count. He started these Critter Counts back in the 1970s, monitoring biota at two intertidal sites in Santa Cruz. These sites have since been incorporated into the LiMPETS program. I'm sure it made John smile whenever he thought of generation after generation of schoolkids traipsing down to the intertidal with their quadrats and transect lines, counting organisms the way he had for so many years.

When I started teaching my Ecology class, John suggested that I take the students out to Davenport Landing to monitor at the LiMPETS site there. That is another of his long-term sites, and he was worried about losing information if it were not sampled at least once a year. My students have done LiMPETS monitoring three years now, and John accompanied us on at least two of those visits. I tried to impress upon the students that having John Pearse himself come out with us was a Big Deal, but am not sure I was able to convince them of how fortunate they were. I bet there are a lot of marine biologists in California who would dearly love to go tidepooling with John. And now no one else will.

John Pearse and Todd Newberry, the other professor who gets the blame for how I think about biology, taught an Intertidal Biology class. I came along on many of the field trips the last year they taught it. I remember getting up before dawn to drive down to Carmel, park in the posh neighborhood streets, and walk down to meet John and Todd in the intertidal. I remember slogging through the sticky mud at Elkhorn Slough, digging for Urechis and hearing John shout "It's a goddamned brachiopod!" from across the flat. I remember bringing phoronid worms back to the lab, looking at them under the scope, and watching blood flow into and out of their tentacles. I remember John taking an undergraduate, Jen, and me out to Franklin Point, and showing me my very first staurozoans. That was probably around 1996, and I'm still in love with those animals.

I'm no John Pearse or Todd Newberry, but I'm a small part of their giant legacy in this part of the world. I strive to instill in my students the joy and intellectual pleasure in studying the natural world that I inherited from John and Todd. Partly to honor them, but mostly because it suits my own inclinations, I'm on a one-woman crusade to bring natural history back into modern science and science education.

I've spent the last two mornings in the intertidal at two of the LiMPETS sites, as part of a personal tribute to John. I thought there would be no greater way to memorialize John than by spending some quality time in the intertidal, where he trained so many young minds. I was thinking of him as I took photos, and thought he would be pleased if I shared them.

Natural Bridges—4 August 2020

Shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes)
2020-08-04
© Allison J. Gong
  • Owl limpet (Lottia gigantea)
    2020-08-04
    © Allison J. Gong
  • Purple urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus)
    2020-04-08
    © Allison J. Gong

And because, like me, John had a special affinity for the anemones:

Sunburst anemone (Anthopleura sola)
2020-08-04
© Allison J. Gong
Sunburst anemone (Anthopleura sola)
2020-08-04
© Allison J. Gong

And he would have loved this. What is going on here? How did this pattern come to be?

Anemones (Anthopleura elegantissima and possibly A. sola)
2020-08-04
© Allison J. Gong

And look at this, three species of Anthopleura in one tidepool! Can you identify them?

Tidepool at Natural Bridges
2020-08-04
© Allison J. Gong

Davenport Landing—5 August 2020

It was windy and drizzly this morning. I ran into a friend, Rani, and her family out on the flats; they were leaving as I arrived. I hadn't seen her since before the COVID-19 lockdown began back in March. She was also visiting the tidepools to honor John Pearse. We chatted from a distance and exchanged virtual hugs before heading our separate ways.

It felt like a John Pearse kind of morning. I recorded the video clip I needed for class, collected some algae and mussels for a video shoot tomorrow, and took a few photos.

A typical intertidal assemblage (sea stars, sea anemones, and algae) at Daveport Landing
2020-08-05
© Allison J. Gong

And even though I'm not very good at finding nudibranchs, even I couldn't miss this one. It was almost 4 cm long!

Nudibranch (Triopha maculata) at Davenport Landing
2020-08-05
© Allison J. Gong

The ultimate prize for any tidepool explorer is always an octopus. When I take newbies into the field that's what they always want to see. I have to explain that while octopuses are undoubtedly there and common, they are very difficult to find. You can't be looking for them, unless you really like being frustrated.

But John must have been with me in spirit this morning, because I found this:

Red octopus (Octopus rubescens) at Davenport Landing
2020-08-05
© Allison J. Gong

It was just a small one, with the mantle about as long as my thumb. I found it because I spotted something strange poking out from a piece of algae. It was the arm curled with the suckers facing outward. I touched it, and the arm retracted. It didn't seem to like how I tasted.

And lastly, for me this is the epitome of John Pearse's legacy: Working in the intertidal, showing students how to identify owl limpets. I hope they never forget what it was like to learn from the man who with his wife, literally wrote the book about invertebrates and founded LiMPETS.

John Pearse in the intertidal with my students
2016-04-29
© Allison J. Gong

RIP, John S. Pearse. You left behind some enormous shoes to fill and a legacy that will stretch down through generations. I count myself lucky to have spent time with you in the field and in the lab. While I will miss you sorely, it is my privilege to pass on your lessons. Thank you for all you have taught me.

Published on Leave a comment on Emergence

Every summer, like clockwork, my big female whelk lays eggs. She is one of a pair of Kellett's whelks (Kellettia kellettii) that I inherited from a labmate many years ago now. True whelks of the family Buccinidae are predatory or scavenging snails, and can get pretty big. The female, the larger of the two I have, is almost the length of my hand; her mate is a little bit smaller.

  • Female whelk (Kellettia kellettii)
  • Male whelk (Kellettia kellettii)

Many marine snails (e.g., abalones, limpets, and turban snails) are broadcast spawners, spewing large numbers of gametes into the ocean and hoping for the best. These spawners have high fecundity, but very few, if any, of the thousands of eggs shed will survive to adulthood. We say that in these species, parental investment in offspring extends only as far as gamete production. Fertilization and larval development occur in the water column, and embryos and larvae are left to fend for themselves.

The whelks, on the other hand, are more involved parents. They maximize the probability of fertilization by copulating, and the female produces yolky eggs that provide energy for the developing embryos and larvae. Rather than throw her eggs to the outside world and hoping for the best, the female whelk deposits dozens of egg capsules, each of which contains a few hundred fertilized eggs.

Over a period of about three weeks I shot several time-lapse video clips of the mama whelk laying eggs. Due to the pandemic we need to work in shifts at the lab. Fortunately I have the morning shift, which means I can start as early as I want as long as I leave before 11:00 when the next person comes in. Each 2.5-hr stint at the lab yielded about 30 seconds of video, not all of which was interesting; even in time-lapse, whelks operate at a snail's pace. Still, I was surprised at how active the female could be while she was apparently doing nothing.

The freshly deposited capsules are a creamy white color, as are the embryos inside them. As the embryos and then larvae grow, they get darker. Each of the fertilized eggs develops through the first molluscan larval stage, called a trochophore larva, within its own egg membrane. The embryo, and then the trochophore, survives on energy reserves provided by the mother snail when she produced the egg. These larvae don't hatch from their egg membrane until they've reached the veliger stage.

Pumpkin seed-shaped egg capsule of the whelk Kellettia kellettii, 13 mm tall.
Egg capsule of Kellettia kellettii
2020-06-20
© Allison J. Gong
Veliger larva of Kellettia kellettii
2020-07-25
© Allison J. Gong

The veliger larva gets its name from a lobed ciliated structure called a velum. Gastropods and bivalves have veliger larvae. As you might expect, the bivalve veliger has two shells, and the gastropod veliger has a coiled snail shell. These Kellettia veligers have dark opaque patches on the foot and some of the internal organs. That coloration is what you see in the photo of the egg capsule. You can see below which of the egg capsules are the oldest, right?

Mated pair of Kellettia kellettii and their egg capsules
2020-07-25
© Allison J. Gong

By the time the veligers emerge from the egg capsule, they have burned through almost all of the energy packaged in the yolk of the egg. They need to begin feeding very soon. The current generated by the beating cilia on the velum both propels the larva through the water and brings food particles to the larva's mouth. The velum can be pulled into the shell, and, as in any snail the opening to the shell can be shut by a little operculum on the veliger's foot. As is the case with most bodies, the veliger is slightly negatively buoyant, so as soon as it withdraws into the shell it begins to sink. However, once the velum pops back out the larva can swim rapidly.

Watch how the veliger swims. You can also see the heart beat!

So now the egg capsules are being emptied as the larvae emerge. I'm not keeping the veligers, so they are making their way through the drainage system back out to the ocean. As of now there are no iNaturalist observations of Kellettia kellettii in the northern half of Monterey Bay, so it appears that for whatever reason the whelks have not been able to establish viable populations here. Or it might be that the whelks are here but there aren't enough SCUBA divers in the water to see them.

These little veligers will be very lucky if any of them happen to encounter a subtidal habitat where they can take up residence as juvenile whelks. Even for animals that show a relatively high degree of parental care, the chances of any individual larva surviving to adulthood are exceedingly small. However, for the reproductive strategy of Kellettia to have evolved and persisted, there must be a payoff. In this case, the reward is an equal or greater reproductive success compared to snails that simply broadcast thousands of unprotected eggs into the water. Some gastropods such as the slipper shell Crepidula adunca, take parental care even further than Kellettia; in this species the mother broods her young under her shell until they've become tiny miniatures of herself, then she pushes them out to face the world and find a turban snail to live on. Crepidula adunca does not have a swimming larval stage at all. The fact that we see a variety of strategies—many eggs with little care, fewer eggs with more care, and brooding—indicates that there's more than one way to be successful.

Published on Leave a comment on NEOWISE

My best shot of the comet that has been hanging out near Earth over the past week or so:

Comet NEOWISE
Comet NEOWISE
2020-07-25
© Allison J. Gong

Technical details, for those who care about such things:

  • Nikon D750 with Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED lens, focal length 200mm
  • 10 sec exposure at f/2.8
  • ISO 1000, exposure bias +0.3

Published on Leave a comment on An exception to the rule

Biology is a field of science with very few absolutes. For every rule that we teach, there seems to be at least one exception. I imagine this is very frustrating for students who want to know that Something = Something every single time. It certainly is easier to remember a few rules that apply to everything, than to keep track of all the cases when they don't.

Take, for example, the tube feet of sea stars. Among the generalities that we teach are: (1) sea star tube feet are used for locomotion and feeding; and (2) sea star tube feet are used to stick firmly to rocks and to pry open mussel shells. And we can show many examples of stars clinging to vertical and overhanging surfaces.

Purple sea star sticking to vertical rock surface in the intertidal
Ochre star (Pisaster ochraceus) at Franklin Point
2015-07-15
© Allison J. Gong
Purple sea star sticking to granite boulder in the intertidal
Ochre star (Pisaster ochraceus) at Mitchell's Cove
2019-06-03
© Allison J. Gong

Sometimes we can even find Pisaster doing both at the same time:

Ochre star (Pisaster ochraceus) wrapped around mussel(s) (Mytilus californianus) while clinging to an overhanging surface at Natural Bridges
2020-07-06
© Allison J. Gong

A photo like the one above is merely a snapshot of an event that lasts for hours. What's going on in there? Chances are it's a life-or-lunch battle, with the star trying to pry open the mussel just enough to slide its stomach between the shells while the bivalve is holding its shells clamped shut for dear life.

Each of these behaviors-—sticking to rocks and prying open mussels—is possible because Pisaster ochraceus has suckered tube feet. The tube foot itself has a flattened surface that squishes out a tiny dab of sticky adhesive glue. Together, the tube feet can adhere quite strongly to hard surfaces. I know from experience that it is impossible to pry an ochre star off a rock after it has had a chance to hang on, unless you're willing to damage several dozen tube feet. The tube feet will grow back, but there's no point in causing harm to the animal.

Arm tip of a sea star in a tidepool, showing suckered tube feet sticking to a rock
Tube feet at the arm tip of Pisaster ochraceus
2019-06-18
© Allison J. Gong

So that's the general story we teach in school. For most students, that's the entire story. However, it's always the exceptions, the deviations from the norm, that are the most interesting.

Not every sea star clings to rocks in the intertidal. There are several species that are equally at home on both rocks and sand. And among the rock-clingers, not all are as strong as Pisaster ochraceus. The ochre star's sucker-shaped tube feet are an example of the relationship between form and function: the tube feet's morphology provides the surface area for adhesion that allows the animal to feed and locomote over hard surfaces.

Spiny sand star (Astropecten armatus) at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center
2020-07-15
© Allison J. Gong

As you might expect, sea stars that don't cling to rocks and pry open mussels may not have sucker-shaped tube feet. The spiny sand star, Astropecten armatus, has pointed tube feet! It's hard to see exactly what the tube feet look like in the photo, but here's a video:

See how the tube feet on the underside of that arm end in points rather than suckers? If we revisit the notion of form and function, what questions come to mind when you look at the morphology of the tube feet? And given Astropecten's common name and its habitat, can you think of how it can survive and get around without the sticking power of Pisaster's tube feet?

Observation of Astropecten in its natural habitat would show that it spends a lot of time buried in the sand. It somehow has to get below the surface of the sand, where it feeds on olive snails or other animals that live buried there. How can it do that? Would the generalized sea star sucker-shaped tube feet that we teach to students be useful for burrowing? We can also think about it in a more familiar context: If you had to dig a hole in the ground, would you reach for a plunger? Clearly you wouldn't. You'd use a shovel, or a spade.

Astropecten's pointed tube feet are perfect for punching down between sand grains, enabling the star to work its way down into the sand. The sand star has hundreds of tiny spades at its disposal to use for digging. Circular structures shaped like miniature horse hooves wouldn't be very good at this job, nor would pointed tube feet be very good at sticking to rocks. This animal doesn't obey the "rules" of sea star biology, but form and function, as always, go together.

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