hard exoskeletons

[jinian]

This fine red rock crab is about six inches wide. I found him under a big rock at Cattle Point, and he gave me a good pinch in retaliation, being a mighty creature.




Another crab, this one a small spider crab from a dredge. It walks delicately and seems to like having its back to the wall.



This large and potentially delicious whitespot prawn friend came up in a dredge with hundreds of conspecifics, none of which we could eat. Research is one thing, shrimp cocktail (alas) another -- it's strictly forbidden to eat the experiments.



From the same haul, a little brokeback shrimp, who is very well camouflaged even in the sea table. This species and the whitespot have been the main survivors of a more varied shrimp sample; some others really suffered from being dragged up through the water with rocks and whatnot, and didn't live long. It's been strange dealing with animals in a lot of ways, and that's one -- the "meet interesting new creatures and kill them" aspect of it all. No one sees any conflict between cooing over the cute larvae and then preserving them for whatever inspecting we need to do. (Well, I garden, but one does feel akin to animals.) Classmate K was trying to break down some tissue for DNA extraction earlier tonight, and it turned out it was a bit of mollusc foot muscle, which is a whole lot more rubbery than any plant part I've used for that purpose.


It's been a lot of fun working in non-model organisms. I did that a bit with the rhododendrons, but that was very much within the one population. With this project, I'm looking at a specific gene that's highly conserved across so many different body plans it boggles the mind, and the clever analysis that people do to find bases for phylogenetic inference is a lot more evident. I definitely want to find a way to take that sensibility back to my work at home. (Begonia leaf in situs?)