Ron’s Blog

I am caught up with all of the chores I had let slide while I was preparing for and giving presentations and lectures this fall.  The last lecture was finished about 3 weeks ago, but given some health problems and the backlog, I didn’t finish with the latter until yesterday.  Wooo….  It feels good to be done!  I am taking a relatively easy weekend, and with the holiday late in the week I don’t expect to get too much done this coming week, as well, but I will be starting on an article on Copepods and the last part of my Diodogorgia project, where in I will be examining the feeding movies I made last summer.  In December, I hope to make a lot of fast progress.  I really don’t have a clue how long the research work will take, but when it is done, I will start writing the article for submission to the peer-reviewed press.

Tanks For The Memories.

Part of the backlog of things I had to do was to replumb my research holding tank.  Initially I built it with quite a complex array of plumbing allowing water transfers from various vats to the tank and to each other.  The problem was that after the initial novelty wore off, I just didn’t use them.  I turned out to be easier just to use plastic tubing and buckets.  And after a while the whole system of the pipes and the pump developed some really annoying buzzes and resonance hums.  So… It finally became time to remove them.  In the process, I got rid of an ETSS skimmer that was finally dying of plastic fatigue failure (literally falling to pieces).  I had had the skimmer for about 10 years and it worked well up until about a year ago when cracks started to appear.  So, along with the pipes, it went to the dumpsters on Wednesday.  I got a new, much smaller skimmer, a Turbofloater, and it is now set up and working.   But, after all of this… WHAT A MESS!!!  It took me a day and a half to get my office/lab into habitable condition again.

By removing all of the excess PVC pipes and the skimmer, I removed the source of the buzzes and hums.  I know have a simple closed loop for my main pump, a Reeflo “Snapper,” and wow… does it produce the current in my 55 gallon tank!  By taking the skimmer et al. out of the loop, I have probably increased the current flow by a factor of 20 or more.  The current really rips - over the next few days I am going to have to seriously re-arrange my system for my animals to take good advantage of the new flow regime. 

Winter keeps creeping up or bearing down upon us - depending upon one’s point of view I guess.  Right now, we have a few inches of snow and temperatrues in 10F to 40F (-14C to 5C) range per day, but last Wednesday, our afternoon high was 63 F (17 C), so the swings in the temperature have been providing some needed respite from cold temperatures.  Historically, during the late November to early December period here, we have the first of the ”good” winter cold snaps - it generally lasts about a week or 10 days, and the temperatures drop well below zero Fahrenheit.  Temperatures in the -20 F to -30 F (-23 to -28 C) range used to be normal.  However, with the warming over the last couple of decades, such cold periods are “iffy” - I would guess that we have had such a weather period only about 3 of the last 6 years, and the duration is less than historically has been normal, and the temperatures are warmer.  So… we’ll see if they occur this year.  

Well, more later as news develops.

Until then,

Cheers!!!

It Was The Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day Of The Eleventh Month

Copyright: www.free-images.org.uk

And the guns fell silent along the Western Front; and “The War To End All Wars” and “The War To Make The World Safe For Democracy” was over…  Or rather, it had an intermission that lasted until September 3, 1939.  The 20th Century will surely be remembered for many things, but let us all hope it will be remembered for mankind’s last World War.  I think, along with a lot of other historians (I consider myself an amatuer historian, among many other things) that it is a reasonable point of view to consider both World Wars to be sequential acts of the same play.  The first world war ended primarily because all the combatants, with the exception of the US of A, were worn out and unable to continue the fight.  Nothing was resolved - and the conditions that allowed the war to continue were still in place.

Interestingly enough, this first excercise in whole world carnage, really started for no good reasons except for idiocy in the Balkans and carte blanche in the response.  There was no great animosity between the Great Powers - there was, however, at the highest level, great idiocy amongst and between the Great Powers.  “Hey, we built all these Dreadnoughts for something, didn’t we…”???  What that first war seemed to accomplish, however, was to really set the seeds of animosity for the second, at least amongst the losers. 

Then, along came Adolf…  

And here we sit some 75 years after Hitler’s election as Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.  I suspect most people today, if they think of this maniac at all, do not realize that he rose to political leadership in Germany through legal elections.  Then, he rapidly perverted the process to become dictator, but the initial rise was legally accomplished.   Of course the German people of that period had no great history of free elections, Imperial Germany was no friend to the free elections such as we have seen in the US over the last two centuries.  And if you - as a nation - don’t have a history of such elections, you have no sense of loss when they vanish.  As, of course, we have seen in many such places around the world in more recent times.

November 4, 2008.

What an election!   The sweeping in of an American whose ancestry included African and European roots!  A campaign that included a viable and serious woman candidate, as well as…  another worman.  Wow!!!  The winner was a man who grew up attending a small Muslim school in Indonesia - and Harvard law school and was a member of the senate from Illinois.  A man who garnered votes from virtually all sectors of the electorate, even if he didn’t win all sectors of that electorate.  And let us not forget the process…   A peaceable revolution.  Amazing, every 4 years we can “Throw the bastards out.”  - Or - “Throw the bastards in” - depending upon one’s point of view. 

The American electoral system is a  system that works.  It is obviously flawed and not the best way to do things, but it certainly is better than any other way we have been able to come up with.  So, now we get to see what the future brings with this remodeling of our governement.  Damn!  I am proud of that system.  For a while I will dial down my cynicism about goverment and politicians and dial up my “feel good” about it all.

Less Important Things

Over the next few days I will be cleaning and revising my research tank.  I have kind of let things slide during this busy autumn.  However, yesterday I ordered a new protein skimmer, and as soon as it arrives I have to remodel the system. 

Then I will be looking at my movies of Dioodogorgia feeding and enumerating and cataloging the various types of feeding events as well as the various ways that the polyps interact with particles. 

Also, I will be dialing down the intensity of my working efforts.  I really feel like I have been going full bore for several months and I feel the need some prolonged periods of slow time.  I don’t know if anybody in my audiences realize it, but each talk I present takes a minimum 70 to 100 hours to prepare.  So, this autum, when I gave 2 talks in Chicago, 2 in Lisbon, 1 in Oklahoma City, and 6 lectures for the local folks, that amounts to between 800 to 1100 hours of preparation time.  Frankly, I am a bit burned out. 

Well, more later,

Until then,

Cheers!!!

I just returned from my last scheduled meeting of this year.  I was speaking at the CRASE meeting put on by the Oklahoma City based COMAS.  

And what a great meeting it was!!!

The people were enthusiastic, the venue was great, the vendor show was good, and the speakers were prime.  What more could a speaker or attendee ask for?  Nothing, in my humble opinion.  I hope they do it again, and I hope I am asked to speak again.  I know if that occurs, I shalll learn a great deal, and have a grand time.

I particularly enjoyed the talk by Dr. Paul Whitby, the President of COMAS.  He discussed some principles and techniques to use in aquascaping a reef aquarium.  This talk was GREAT, Paul is a great speaker, and his enthusiasm is positively contagious.  The remaining speakers, other than myself were Dennis Tagrin, DT of DT’s phytoplankton, and Dr. Sanjay  Joshi.  Their talks were also excellent and informative.  Dennis showed much data about phytoplankton and demolished the myths that all phytoplankton products available for the aquarium hobby are created equal.  Really, it turns out that most products are just as good as sea water when adequately tested…  That means of course, that most products are absolutely useless.

Sanjay, as one might expect, talked about lighting, and he showed some great information about the variety of lighting options available for the hobbyists.  Neat stuff!!!! 

To all the COMAS folks -  WAY TO GO!!!!

Next For ME

This coming week I have a couple of lectures to prepare for for the local community education folks, and then I have a lot of “catch-up” chores to do.  I have do some serious aquarium maintenance as well as some yard work and such.

Then, I will be getting started on the long-postponed analyses of my Diodogorgia movies, with the aim of finally getting down to writing the work up for publication.

Until later,

Cheers!!

With writing here.  Sorry folks, time has gotten away from me over the last couple of weeks.  I am giving several lectures for the local adult education folks, plus a new presentation at the end of the month and I have been immersed into those projects and just have put off writing here.  Mea culpa

Diodogorgia Research Project

I have done nothing on the project for a while.  The plan is to spend a lot of time on it after I return from Oklahoma City at the end of the month.  I have several hundred one-minute-long movies to go through frame-by-frame to see how food was handled by the gorgonians at various velocities and currents. Then I have to do what statistical analyses I can do.   When that is done… I have to bite the bullet and start to write the first manuscript.  I hope that I can be done with it sometime after the first of the year. 

Other Things

Fall has fallen here.  We have had our first autumnal snow storm, which is now melting off.  This coming weekend is forecast to be pretty nice (for this time of the year), so I suppose I will be outside blowing leaves around and then mulching them with the lawn mower, after that is done, there will be other chores… 

Furry Birds

The first of the year’s furry birds have arrived.  I didn’t get an image of the one that was here the night before last, but here is a shot from last winter.

A mule deer doe feeding at a bird feeder.  Black oil sunflower seeds are really prime food!

It is always a hoot to see how many we get and what they do in the yard.   We also have to watch out for them.  Cute they look, but dangerous they can be.  I suppose we could begrudge them the food, but we don’t - about two years after we moved into this house, we had an emaciated yearling fawn lay down and die in our flower bed.  The poor thing died of malnutrition, and it was a really ugly event.  So… we end up spending a few extra bucks on bird seed for the furry birds - without much of a regret.

Well, time to get back to the lecture writing.

More later.

Cheers!!!

Trip’s Over

Well, I got to bed at 2 AM Monday morning Mountain Daylight time, after arising at 6 AM GMT, about 26 hours - more less - the morning before.  What a marathon trip.  Fortunately, I was able to sleep through the Atlantic leg of the trip.  Nonetheless, I was a trainwreck for the rest of Monday and Tuesday, and today my knees hurt like the dickens from all the walking and standing on my arthritic joints.

Still and all both trips were great!  The folks at both places, Chicago and Lisbon went out of their way to make sure I was comfortable and enjoyed that leg of the trip.

I have got to say, though, that the Reefforum folks in Lisbon, Julio, Pedro, and João Paulo, particularly were absolutely wonderful.  Sanjay Joshi and I were their speakers at a conference in celebration of the 4th anniversary of reefforum, their reef aquarium forum.  Our hosts pulled out all the stops!  We were treated very well, not only was the conference well planned and superbly executed, but during the off times we got to see some great sights - the Vasco de Gama aquarium and the Lisbon Oceanarium.  Both were great in their own and distinctly different ways.  Additionally, we got to see the monastery of São Jerónimo, a truly impressive monument to the grandeur of the age of exploration in one of that time’s most important nations.  The beauty and grace of this building was a wonderful counterpoint to the modern Oceanarium and its wonderful exhibits.  I hope to post some images of both places within the next day or three.

Now What

I have several short classes to prepare for mostly dealing with the ocean and mass extinctions and then I will also be preparing a new talk for a presentation I will be giving in Oklahoma City at the end of the month.  In my “spare time” I will be starting to go through my research movies of Diodogorgia feeding so that I may start to write that work up.

Gonna be a busy time!!!

So… off to it.

Until later,

Cheers,

Diodogorgia Research
I have been spending a fair bit of time on my Diodogorgia data preparing in for my Lisbon presentation at the end of the month.  It is actually looking pretty good.  At least I don’t think I am deluding myself too much in thinking so.  Here is one of the charts I have made, showing the capture rate per polyp for an hour at the indicated velocity in centimeters/second in laminar flow.  The turbulent flow data also good - but they show just the opposite - no trends, and not much in the way of capturing capability.

These data appear really nice and particularly nice is the regression line with an R^2 of 0.9945.  The data are pretty solid.  Except for doing some visuals for my presentation in Portugal at the end of the month, I am putting my analyses on hold for a while.  After I return, I will start in again.  I hope to have a manuscript ready for submission to a journal by the end of the year.

I may want to do some more experimentation as well. I have some data on how these polyps select some prey items and reject others.  This is interesting as octocorallian polyps are not supposed to be able to do this.  But… nobody has ever looked at gorgonian polyps “up close and personal” prior to this work.

Other Things.

I am also preparing another talk - this one to be given in Chicago in about 10 days.  Titled “Why Aquarists Do What They Do,” the presentation is a commentary on sheer lousiness of the standard aquarium reference author and why these people seem unable to keep  in touch with the reality of what is occurring out on reefs.  So, I am going to spend some discussing the sad state of aquarium reference books and trying to urge my audience to empower themselves.  Sigh.  What I probably will do is sound like I am nagging them (I will be) and they probably won’t ever invite me back.  Still… If I can convince even one of them to “do the right thing” it will be worth it.

We are into fall here having had a couple of good frosty nights and days with snow in the mountains across the valley.  The snow is now gone, as today is fairly warm, but I think the winter will be a cold one.  So… I am getting set for it by focusing on waiting for the Spring red-wing blackbird chorus which generally gets going in full force in the first week of March.

Until then, I have to get back to work, I suppose. 

Until later,

Cheers!!!

Diodogorgia Research

The transformation and standardization of my feeding data worked as planned, and I appear to have a lot of useful data, albeit they are a bit more variable than I had hoped.   Without giving away too much prematurely, it appears that there may be no difference in the feeding efficiency of the gorgonian polyps in laminar and turbulent flows, although I will have to do some more analyses to be certain of that.  Given the small size of the colonies and the presumed topographical relief of the substrate where they are likely to be found, it is possible the animals never experience true laminar flow, and it would be reasonable to assume that they are not “optimized” to feed in that manner. 

Another indication of that is the spiral orientation of the polyps around the stalk.  They are found on all sides of the stalk, unlike the polyps of some larger gorgonians where the polyps are arranged to take advantange of currents flowing from one particular orientation.   

In any case, I will be spending some more time today massaging data and trying to make some “visuals” - graphs - I can use in presentations, and publications.  I will be working on this for a day or two more, and then it will go on to the back burner while I work on a second presentation.  I will present the Diodogorgia data in Lisbon in about 3 weeks, but in about 2 weeks I need to present a different talk, and that one is not quite ready, either.

When I return from Lisbon, I need to start going through some of the feeding movies I have made so that I may describe how the individual Diodogorgia polyps capture and reject various foods at various current velocities.  The rejection and capturing behaviors appear to be different for different velocities, but that difference really needs to be quantified.  I may simply be remembering what I wanted to see. 

Lotsa fun times ahead!!!

Other Stuff

Fall has fallen - with a thud.  Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Autumn here is often quite beautiful.  The problem is that it can rapidly turn into winter, and while the nice white winter snowfalls may be pretty, they are also a pain in the patooty to deal with.   In any case, this means it is time to do the outside chores of autumn before it snows and the ground freezes.  Now having said all this, we have not yet had our first fall frost, and it may be a while before that occurs.  Or not, the low for tomorrow night is predicted to be just about freezing.  It has already frosted in the mountains around us, so the leaves are starting to turn.

So…

More later…

Until then,

Cheers!!!

Diodogorgia Research

I have been pulling together the data from my research during the last couple of weeks, among many other things.  Time flies, I guess, as I didn’t realize I hadn’t added to the blog in such a long time.

The good news is that the data are all in the right range.  The bad news is that they are pretty noisy and difficult to interpret.  I think this latter problem is a result of the small size of my flow chamber.  It works great for observations, but in the longer-term experiments that I have been doing, the small size means that, for example, each Artemia larva may pass through the pump 2500 times in an hour.  Or not.  In any case, this means that there is a sizeable loss of potential food items due to being “blenderized” in the experimental system, and it is difficult to control for because the relative volume is so small.  Because of the small size of the samples, when I standardize them to a number, errors get magnified as well.  The classic example of this is when an environmental researcher samples, say, a beach.  In one sediment sample, he aor she finds one-half of a specific type of worm weighing about 1/4 of a gram.  Then when the sample is melded with all the other data, the researcher can say that one that beach there are six metric tons of these worms.  All due to spurious magnification of a small sample.  One has to work to avoid doing stoopid things like that.  

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not griping about this.  I rather expected it as a matter of fact, however, it means that I will have to use some data transformations, such as a natural log transformation of the data (where all of the data are modified by preforming the following transformation of them:  ln(x+1) ) to reduce some of the variance.  This is a standard data transformation for biological data, as it reduces variability, but it is rather difficult to explain it to a “statistically” naïve audience - such the typical aquarists.  Oh well, that will be my problem down the line.

Fall Is Here

It arrived a couple of days before the end of August with cold winds and drizzly weather.  In the mountains across the valley, all of the peaks became snow-covered.  Sigh, we’re on our way down to a cool winter I think, unless La Nina takes a powder.

Other Things

I am revising my talks for the upcoming presentations in Chicago and Lisbon.  Two different talks, and both have to be “brought up to snuff,” with new information and visuals.  It is rather fun to do this, but it IS time-consuming. 

More Later, ’till then…

Cheers!!

Diodogorgia Research

I finished the planned feeding trials last Friday with the second set of trials at using a current velocity of 32 cm/sec.  My suspicion, after a glance at the raw data, is that the animals effectively didn’t do much feeding at that velocity.  This is different than the results I found the first time around at 32 cm/sec, but I have improved the apparatus since that first - more or less - trial run done about a year ago.  Actually, the animals did eat, especially in the second set of trials, but with the way I have to determine their feeding amount - by subtracting before and after mean sample estimates of the Artemia in the system, there is a fair bit of built in “error” and I can’t detect small differences in the brine shrimp abundances.  However, after each set of feeding runs, I remove the specimen and examine it for evidence of feeding.  This is usually fairly easy to see, as the animals will regurgitate some semi-digested and some live nauplii.  And even on these high velocity runs, there were some of each in the beaker after a few minutes. 

I still have to get movies of feeding at that velocity and, in fact, am trying to do that as I write this, but the specimen has not inflated yet.  Not a biggie… if it doesn’t inflate today, I will just keep it in the apparatus over night, and it will almost certainly inflate by tomorrow.  

If I get the time, I will then try to get some feeding videos with different food sources, and I will do this at velocities where I know the animal will feed well; probably somewhere in the 8 cm/sec to 16 cm/sec range.  Gorgonians, according to the “literature,” are not supposed to make choices about feeding; in effect they are supposed to eat everything they can catch.  However, I aready have videos of them rejecting Artemia cysts, so I want get some more data in that regard.  Possibly I will test whether they reject both hydrated and empty (hatched) cysts as well as some fine pelletized food (”Golden Pearls”).

Once I am done with those trials, I will be done with the experimental trials for most of the autumn.  I have to concentrate my efforts on making my scheduled presentations the best that I can do, and that will take a lot of time.  

After that I will have to start in on the writing of the article (or articles) that this work has generated.  I think they will be small, succint, and very cool as they will show that Gorgonians (or, at least, individuals of this specific species) are not passively feeding animals and that they capture foods with a unique and undescribed feeding mechanism.     

Once I am done with the manipulation of the specimens, I will be rearranging my holding/reef tank to make sure the animals are all securely placed in such a manner that they can feed, and then I want to boost the amount of food with the hope of inducing spawning, perhaps next spring.  I will also have to alter the temperature of the system through the winter; first dropping it to about 24C and then bringing it up to about 27C in the spring.  It would be really cool to have an induced spawning in my system.

More later…

Until then,

Cheers!!!

Diodogorgia Research

Today, I am running the penultimate set of feeding trials.  With some luck I will do the last one tomorrow.  These trials are being run at current velocities of 32 cm/sec, and the data will supplement/replace some data I collected very early in this project.  After I am done with the feeding trials, I will do some movies of feeding at this current velocity, and then…

I will be done with the experimental work on this part of my Diodogorgia project.  The project keeps growing though.  I have been thinking about some experiments that I will be doing showing how the animals chose and reject various foods.   Maybe these will be in “Phase 2.”

The First

After doing a lot of reading, I have come to the conclusion that I am probably the first person who has sat down and actually watched a gorgonian polyp feed.  One of the interesting things that has occurred over the last 30 years or so has been the “rise” of the discipline of biomechanics as sort of non-biological way to look at animals.  Researchers using this approach have examined a few octocorals: sea pens, alcyonarians, to some small extent gorgonians, and using an engineering approach have deemed these animals as passive suspension feeders.  Basically they are supposed to be the undersea equivalent of flypaper eating everything that hits them.

Maybe so…  But I don’t think so.  Very few of these researchers have actually bothered to examine the animals properly and virtually none of them appear to have spent any time trying to determine what the animals actually feed upon.  Instead, they have tried to erect a model based on the shape of the animal that predicts how many particles could be eaten per given time, provided the animals were passive suspension feeders. 

What they haven’t really bothered to do is test the model to see if the animals are passive.  Another thing that none of these researchers have done is to watch the animals that they are discussing feed to see just exactly how they go about it.  It is an interesting situation, these people describe themselves as biologists, yet they have no idea of the basic biology of the organisms that they are supposedly studying.

My work on Diodogorgia nodulifera shows that this species is definitely not passive; the animals certainly can reject some potential food items.   I think the publication of the results of this research is going to raise some hackles and cause some fuss and feathers.  At least I hope it will, because I am going to emphasize just how bass-ackwards these biomechanicians have been.  They erect a model based upon their understanding of the physical environment.  But they never actually test it.  So, in a real sense these models are hypotheses waiting to be refuted.  And I am going to refute a couple, big time. 

It should be interesting to see what kind of editorial responses I get when I submit my articles based on this research for publication.  I am surely going to be goring some favorite oxen… I think there is a significant chance - in a couple of journals - that my articles would be rejected simply because they don’t toe the party line. 

Maybe I am being too pessimistic.  Time will tell.  I suspect I will be ready to submit my first manuscripts by the middle of November.  It would sooner, but I have a lot of presentations to give in September and October.

Some interesting times are coming down the pike!

Until later,

Cheers!!!