On April 1, 2003, a massive squid was pulled up from the sub-antarctic waters south of New Zealand, and while a bit mangled by the fishing lines that captured it and suffering from additional damage from packing and travel, it still measured 5.2 meters (nearly 18 feet long) and weighed 300 kilos (660 pounds), making it one of the largest invertebrates ever studied. This specimen made its way to the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand where it became the object of intense study among those with a particular obsession with squid. It turned out this was just a young one.

The Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) was first described in 1925 on the basis of several tentacles taken from the stomach of the squid-eating sperm whale; these tentacles and the distinctive sharp hooks on the suckers were unique enough to warrant designation as a new species.  In the intervening decades juveniles and chunks of larger individuals were collected and described, and yet an entire adult specimen was not to be known until decades later. Whaling stations routinely examined sperm whale stomachs to identify what – and possibly where – they were eating, and while longer arms and tentacles from other squid species had been examined from whale bellies, the relatively modest tentacles from the first Colossal Squid didn’t really indicate what a massive beast the squid would turn out to be until the 2003 specimen was found.

In February 2007 another Colossal Squid was accidentally snagged as it pilfered Patagonian Toothfish from a longliner plying the Antarctic waters of the Ross Sea south of New Zealand. Barely alive but relatively undamaged, the dying specimen was filmed, photographed, and readied for travel to the Te Papa. This adult, weighing some 495 kilos – more than half a ton – was easily the largest squid ever captured, If not as long as the Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux), its sheer mass made it the largest non-vertebrate animal alive on the planet. Today, this Colossal Squid is in eternal repose, inanimate and floating in a formalin-filled glass-topped casket for public viewing in the Te Papa Museum, not unlike the embalmed corpse of Vladimir Lenin inside his brick mausoleum in Russia’s Red Square, but far more interesting. Since 2007, several more Colossal Squid were received by the Te Papa, including one obtained just last year, but are housed in the off-site collections facility several blocks from the museum, and none are as large as this one.

Prior to construction of Te Papa’s Colossal Squid exhibit, an exhaustive anatomical study was performed on the animal.  Dissection of one of the internally-lit eyes that could project illumination toward its tentacles made it clear that was it adapted for hunting fish & other squid in the deep, dark Antarctic waters, and by deep, we’re talking more than a kilometer underwater. It was, in fact, the largest eye of any animal yet known.  The relatively small tentacles of this species were made more lethal due to the serrated suckers on the eight arms of the squid – a common feature in many species of large squid – but also sharp hooks on the tentacular clubs that could swivel, thus keeping a firm hold on struggling prey. Most startlingly, the large beak of this squid was smaller than beaks of the same species taken from Sperm Whale stomachs, evidence that super-colossal Colossal Squid are alive and hunting in the southern seas.

The post Super Colossal first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Further out from the venting fluid is the ‘B’ group, a mixture of medium size males and females. This coed party can be in the 100’s per meter squared. The majority of the females here possess ripe ovaries suggesting they are receptive to the sexual inquiries of the males. Further out again from the venting fluids is an additional coed party, ‘C’ group, and despite only being attended by the smallest of females and males densities reaches over 4,000 per meter squared. This area smells a lot like stale beer and hormones, is illuminated by glow sticks, and all overlaid with rhythmic pounding of the latest pop hit club remix. There ain’t party like a C group party because a C group party never stops.

At the very periphery, far from the venting fluids and at the coldest temperatures, is a transition zone. Here, juveniles are in search of the venting fluids to sustain their harry bacteria. In addition, brooding females find refuge here for their young from the environmental extremes of the vent and potential damage from lusty crabs crawling all over each other.

In the video above an ‘A’ Group (00:41–01:05) A ‘B’ Group (left) adjacent to an ‘A’ group (right) at the “Black & White” chimney (00:41–01:05).

In short, males are driven by sex and food as you might expect from a crab with luxuriant chest ‘hair’. The females add the additional priority of actually carrying and caring about the young.

Marsh, L., Copley, J., Tyler, P., & Thatje, S. (2015). In hot and cold water: differential life-history traits are key to success in contrasting thermal deep-sea environments Journal of Animal Ecology DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12337

The post For Hoff Yeti Crabs Food, Sex, and Birth Determine Living Space At Vents   first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Maybe if Red Bull funded marine research, we could send a skydiving human icebreaker, whose parachute doubles as an otter trawl and niskin bottle, to crash through polar seas in the winter and collect scientific samples. (Felix Baumgartner, CALL ME!)

No, marine research is funded by government agencies – they hold the dolla$ for the ships. Winter sampling-by-stuntman would be a little too risky for their tastes, and so research in polar regions by default has to happen in the summer (one of the reasons the Antarctic program was almost screwed by the government shutdown). My point? Our knowledge of polar regions is almost exclusively based on research done during ONE season. But according to a recent study, that seasonal bias is really messing with our understanding of biology.

In a badass new paper, Ladau et al. (2013) looked at diversity in bacterial communities around the globe, comparing patterns across seasons, and at the equator versus the poles. Although we generally think of the tropics as “biodiversity hotspots” for larger organisms, bacteria swimming in surface ocean waters are way to hipster to follow such mainstream diversity patterns.

Because scientists always sample high latitudes during summer months, previous data seemed to give the appearance of higher bacterial species diversity in tropical waters. But this isn’t actually true! The bacteria all go party at high latitudes in the WINTER – you know, that time of year when there are NO SCIENTISTS doing any sampling. Bacterial diversity shows huge, seasonal winter peaks (in December at temperate and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and in June at temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere), making tropical biodiversity look  pretty LAME in comparison.

Ladau et al. used a modeling approach to compensate for the persistent sampling bias in time and location – they were able to extrapolate the predicted species distributions of bacteria based on real environmental datasets (rRNA genes sequences). They pummeled the data from every possible angle – changing models, changing parameters, subsampling their data, using other datasets, and even looking at error rates. Nothing could mess with their results – the predicted biodiversity patterns stood up to every kind of test.

Why does bacterial diversity show seasonal peaks during the wintertime in both hemispheres? We’re still not sure, but it might be due to vertical mixing which brings nutrients (and species?) to the surface. Another theory is that bacteria could migrate across latitudes. Models are no substitute old fashioned fieldwork, but they’re important for letting us look at biology from a different perspective. In this case, it shows we need to collect way more wintertime samples.

Reference:

Ladau J, Sharpton TJ, Finucane MM, Jospin G, Kembel SW, Dwyer JOA, et al. (2013) Global marine bacterial diversity peaks at high latitudes in winter. The ISME Journal, 7:1669–77.

The post Hipster bacteria hate the tropics (it’s too mainstream) first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My heart aches deeper and deeper with each new horror story I hear from scientists affected by shutdown. Especially in Antarctica.

The research season in Antarctica typically starts around now, when things warm up enough to be merely frigid and scientists from around the world flock far south to conduct studies that affect our understanding of climate change, volcanoes, the family life of Weddell seals and much more. But with the United States government partly shut down, federally financed research has come to a halt for Dr. Levy [Jospeh Levy, researcher at UT Austin] and hundreds of other Americans. Even if a budget deal is struck, these scientists will have less time on the ice, and some will lose a full year’s worth of work as the narrow window of productive time closes….the effects will be felt beyond the inconvenience of a single summer…gaps in the record may damage data sets built on decades of work. “It’s tragic.” (via New York Times article)

You can read countless other stories online: Dawn Sumner at UC Davis (one of our lab’s close collaborators), James Collins at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute – the list just keeps going on…and on and on and on.

And the impacts are particularly devastating for young scientists. The postdocs whose job prospects will depend on their Antarctic data. The new Assistant Professors whose tenure decisions will hinge on the success of their newly funded NSF projects. The undergrads and graduate students who can’t even bloody submit their research proposals (grant submission website are shut down as well!). I was visiting Gretchen Hofman at UC Santa Barbara last Friday while she was frantically arranging an NPR interview on this critical topic (the Antarctic program was cancelled while one of her postdocs, Amanda Kelley, was on the plane to McMurdo. Amanda only found out the news when her plane landed):

…one of the casualties, one of the things that we stand to lose right now is important productivity for junior scientists, people who are just starting their careers…I think one of the examples I can think of is someone at the University of Alabama. Her name is Samantha Hansen. I know this really well ’cause last season I was there. Samantha – Sam – and I were roommates in our science dorm. Sam’s a geologist and she deployed these very interesting, complex remote sensing instruments out in the Antarctic mountains. She’s interested in studying the processes that, you know, sort of essentially shape our planet and make mountains. And Sam’s instruments right now have data that’s really important to her, important to the science world. And if we can’t go get them, the data will be lost, the instruments could be buried in snow and it’ll be a complete loss for this charismatic young scientist. (Transcript from NPR)

What can we do about all this? I’m still struggling to figure this out, but I’m definitely angry and frustrated. I signed this petition at Change.org: “Don’t Stop the Science! Congress: Shutdown Exemption for the United States Antarctic Program” started by Richard Jeong who works as a contractor at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. I’m also going to write to my senator and representatives, and I urge everyone who loves marine science to do the same.

Doing science is hard enough. Getting grants funded is an even tougher game. But to have your funded research cancelled at the last minute (ruining observation data, or losing expensive instruments)? That shit cray. In a very sick way.

The post The slow strangling of marine science careers, as the Government Shutdown drags on first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The group sequences genes from 23 species of marine squat lobsters including for Yeti Crab species.  No they are not called squat lobsters because they can squat massive amount of weight like a boss. Squat lobsters, while superficially resembling short lobsters, are actually crabs that are flattened with long tails curled beneath them and most closely related to hermit and mole crabs.

Rather impressively, Roterman’s team sequenced nine gene regions, including two from the ribosomal RNA genes, 5 protein-coding genes, and two from the mitochondria.  This sort of genetic coverage first tells the world you’re a total genetic badass and second gives a tremendous amount of power to resolve relationships among these crabs.

What you get after a set of super fancy computational analyses is how individual species sets of nine genes are related to other species sets.  The tree above details those relationships.  To give you bearings the tips of the tree labeled Kiwa are the four Yeti Crabs.  You can see easily see they form a distinctive cluster, i.e. they are more closely related.  The length of the horizontal lines is how much genetic divergence exists between species.  So Kiwa ESR and Kiwa SWIR are relatively closely related and diverged relatively recently.  These two Kiwa plus K. hirsuta are more closely related than any of them to K. puravida.  Likwise, the Kiwa group (Kiwaidae) is more closely related to those species in the Chirostylidae. Those numbers and asterisks on the tree provide two different estimates of confidence in the branching or split at that spot.  Numbers closer to 100% and probabilities over 0.99 denoted by ** have more confidence.

What does this tree tell us?!

K. puravida is more basal, i.e. the earliest species to branch and the one that goes best in pesto, among the Yeti Crabs, with K. hirsuta being second. In the map below K. puravida (A) and K. hirsuta (B) are both found in the Pacific while Kiwa ESR (C) and Kiwa SWIR (D) are found in the Souther Atlantic.  Based on where the basal species are located, the origins of the group are most likely in the eastern Pacific Ocean.  The authors suggested that spreading zones in red served as larval highways for Yeti Crabs.  Once Yeti crabs reached the Antarctic Oceans they hitched a ride on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current through the Drake Passage that allowed them to colonize the South Atlantic.  Given that one of these crabs has the wonderful name of the Hoff Crab, I am reminded of David Hasselhoff swimming.

By calibrating this genetic tree with fossil data we can hypothesize when these splits between different groups and species occurred.  The Yeti Crabs most likely split into new species around 55 million years ago after an event name the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).  During this time global temperatures raised by 11˚F.  The warm oceans caused many marine organisms to go extinct.  The post PETM world would have contained many opportunities for an enterprising hairy chested crab.

C. N. Roterman, J. T. Copley,  K. T. Linse,  P. A. Tyler,  and A. D. Rogers The biogeography of the yeti crabs (Kiwaidae) with notes on the phylogeny of the Chirostyloidea (Decapoda: Anomura)Proc. R. Soc. B August 7, 2013 280 1764 20130718; doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.0718 1471-2954

The post The Origins of Hairy Crabs first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Want more sea ice and Antarctica?  Brooks blogged about being a scientist aboard an ice breaker at National Geographic.  Also includes some interesting history of Antarctic exploration. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/author/cbrooks/

The post Break through 2 months of Antarctic sea ice in 5 minutes first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Ken described the project (funded by the US National Science foundation) in a recent e-mail:

We left Punta Arenas Chile Jan 1st, 2013 and arrive into McMurdo Station, Antarctica Feb 7th. The purpose of this cruise is to study genetic patterns of biodiversity in the Bellingshausen, Amundsen and Ross Seas. These are some of the most remote waters on the planet. Given the rapidly changing environment in this region due to climate change, we also want to establish an understanding of where different species currently occur.

You can follow their cruise on Twitter (@Icy_Inverts_AU and  @CMU_Antarctica), and find more information at the websites listed below. Just remember guys, Cabin Fever and/or extended periods of sleeplessness DO NOT MIX WELL with Tweeting.

Blog/web pages:

Icy Inverts 2013 – Shipboard Blog

Icy Inverts 2013 – Project portal at Auburn University

Biology in Antarctica – Project portal at Central Michigan University

YouTube video describing the project:

Auburn University – Icy Inverts 2013 – sorry DSN readers, I couldn’t embed the video here because of the privacy settings :(

The post “Icy Inverts” 2013 Cruise – Scientific Adventures in Antarctic Waters first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Big tip ‘o the hat to @RebeccaRHelm on Twitter for sharing this beautiful video with great music on it. Make sure you stick with the video to about 2/3’s of the way through to see what happens to the jelly!

Video information:

United States Antarctic Program divers, Henry Kaiser and Rob Robbins, both videotape a lovely jellyfish at the Little Razorback Island dive site, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. A few minutes later the jellyfish drifts too near the bottom and is captured by an anemone.

video created and authorized by Henry Kaiser and Rob Robbins
music created and authorized by Henry Kaiser and Knut Reiersrud

The post Beneath Antarctic Ice: Gelatinous Edition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The Tonga Trench Expedition is a Scripps Institution of Oceanography student cruise, led by Scripps graduate student/chief scientist Rosa Leon Zayas. (and if anyone out there is looking for a kick-ass female Latina marine biologist role model – look no further!) The purpose of the expedition is to “to understand the composition of the microbial community of the Tonga Trench and how it is affected by pressure and other environmental conditions.” They’ve just deployed their first instrument, “Deep Sound.”

Cold Dark Benthos is a research blog out of McMurdo Station, Antarctica, by Andrew Thurber (who did his PhD at Scripps with me) & Rory Welsh. They are looking at the role of microbes in the Antarctic food web:

Spiophanes tcherniai is a species of Polychaete that occurs in incredible densities. To be exact in every square meter of sediment there are 150,000 to 180,000 individuals of this species as well as a variety of other species that we call ‘macrofauna.’ The macrofauna are visible to the eye but amazing under a microscope and all are, by definition, greater than 0.3mm in size.  Its an diverse community with small shrimp looking animals, worms of every shape and colors, not to mention clams and anemones.  They co-occur with an incredible variety of bacteria and what we really want to know with this research is whether the bacteria are competing with the animals or facilitating the persistance of these animals, allowing this incredible density in a veritable dessert of food.

The post Two new expedition blogs: super deep South Pacific and super cold Antarctica first appeared on Deep Sea News.

H/T to @stevesilberman on Twitter (his blog)

The post The icy colder finger of death first appeared on Deep Sea News.