Ron’s Blog

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!!!

Diodogorgia Research

Today I am doing the last of the lowest speed (=2 cm/sec) feeding trials, although I still will have to some movie making at that speed, probably on Sunday and/or Monday.  Then I will duplicate my earlier series of feeding tests at 32 cm/sec.  I have modified my protocol slightly and to make sure that the data are “spotlessly clean,” I need to revisit this run.  Given that it appears that specimen F-1 that I have using in the low speed trials appears to be effectively unable to feed at those low velocities, I will give it a break and put in the high speed runs. 

If anything could make that critter happy, that ought to do it, because I think it will - as the saying goes - “pig out.” :-)  It really appears that not only can the animals not feed at these low velocities, they do “try” to feed, and thus they expend energy for no net gain.  It really is not my intent to torture the animals, so I will at least let this one feed well during these next trials. 

When I get done with all of the feeding trials, then I will start the data analyses in earnest, and let me tell you, I am anxious to do so!!!!  I want to see how good (or how bad) my data are.  I think they will be really good, but if they are not, I want to know so I can make what corrections I can, by perhaps testing over. 

Feeding Movies

I will also start really going through my feeding movies and quantifying the images.  I will noting such things as the number of times the filmed polyps get impacted by a nauplius, and then how many times this results in a successful feeding event.  Also, how many times some other items, such as Artemia cysts are rejected as food.  I don’t think there will be any movies that show cysts being eaten.  Down the line a bit, I will be testing feeding using three food items, hatched Artemia cysts, unhatched but hydrated cysts and nauplii.  My guess, after watching the animals so far, is that only the nauplii will be eaten.  Given that some previous researchers have used Artemia cysts as potential food items in feeding trials, I think it will be really interesting to show that at least this species will not eat them.  There are obviously implications to that! 

Additionally, I need to describe the feeding events, one might say, on a tentacle-by-tentacle basis.  In other words, “Just exactly how do these animals capture prey?”  As near as I can tell, this has never been documented with any gorgonian.  Nobody else has really gotten as down close and personal as I have.  I find this both appalling and fortunate.  Fortunate, as it gives me pretty much free rein as the first person to look at them.  But, given how abundant they are in some ecosystems, it is truly ridiculous that nobody has taken a peak between the pinnules, so to speak. 

Publication

Or at least an attempt thereof will follow later this autumn.  I am in a really funny position.  I am doing this work essentially in isolation, even though I am discussing it here and it is available throughout the blogosphere - if any other researchers cared to look; however I really doubt any have.  In any case, I am doing this work without any feedback by anybody who could be considered to be a peer.  So, there is a possibility that I am going off down the proverbial garden path…  

Obviously, I don’t think I am.  Nontheless, I am somewhat worried that I am neglecting some part of the organism’s biology that I have overlooked.  That could be very embarrassing.  Oh well, I have no pride left anyhow, so I will give it all a shot.  The worst that can happen is that I will be told that what I have found is not worth wasting ink to publish. 

At this point, though, my rather substantial ego kicks in and says…. “Wait a minute!  You have done the library research and you have done laboratory research before with good results.  And you are no dummy.  What you have found is valid and worth publishing, so go for it.” 

Never one to turn my back on my ego…  I will go for it.

More later,

Until then,

Cheers!!!      

Give or take a few billion years for the date… 

Perhaps if we could pin the date down a bit more precisely we could say that this year is AT (Anno Terra) 4563471313.  I think that would be cool, instead basing the date on one of the chief holidays of a prevailing religion.  If we are going to base our calendar on a superstition, we should at least rotate through them, and pick the date from each of them for a sequential year, so this year we pretend the Christian calendar is correct, next year it is the Star Trek Stardate, then the Byzantine calendar, then pagan Rome, then the Mayan, and on forever.  Sooner or later, just by random chance we might get it right. 

Or we could simply define the date of the formation of our planet/solar system and go from there; so I vote for the AT date given above - and challenge anybody to prove me wrong!

Diodogorgia Research

The last scheduled set of feeding trials at 4 cm/sec went well, but certainly flirted severely with failure.  The almost failure came by no cause of mine - rather it was, I am sure some folks would say - LOL! - an act of god (pick one).  Each set of feeding trials consists of 4 seperate runs, an experimental and control run for both laminar and turbulent flow regimes.  Those runs are in random order.  I had just finished the third run yesterday, and was almost ready to start the fourth one by adding the Artemia to the flow chamber, when a brief (maybe 20 minute or so) but strong wind storm blew through.  I estimate the gusts as being in excess of 50 mph (80 kph) and they may have been higher.  In any case, about 5 minutes into the storm the power failed.  It was about 3 hours before it was on again. 

Had I added the nauplii to the experimental system, and had it been running when the power went off, I would have had to cancel and redo that run.  I hadn’t, it wasn’t and I didn’t have to.  As soon as the power cam back on, I was able to continue where I left off and I got the data from that component. 

After the trial was over, I did a quick ball park comparison of the data from that final trial and the data from the ealier trials, and they looked to be consistent.  So… I don’t have to do them all over again.  Whew!!!

These trials are tedious and I really wasn’t looking foreward to doing this one over.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to!

Tomorrow, I will be trying to make some moviesof the animals feeding at 4 cm/sec currents.  My body permitting, of course. I may be a day or two late in that effort.

Now, off to some reading in my latest issues of Coral Reefs, which arrived in the mail last week.

Should be fun!

More Later, 

Until then,

Cheers!!! 

Diodogorgia Research

The specimen I ordered from Marine Depot Live, arrived on Tuesday as I wished, and it was in very good shape.  It has been acclimating in my reef/holding tank and, with some luck, I will use it in the next set of experimental trials tomorrow.   Therefore, today is a preparation day, where I will mix up the sea water, get the apparatus ready, and glue the specimen into a specimen holder.  All of this providing I can get my act together to do it.

We went on a marathon errand running frenzy yesterday in both Bozeman and Livingston, and as a result both Roxie and I are verging on being wrecks today.  Waaaay too much overdoing - but then it means no more chores of that nature for a week or so, when we have to go to Billings so I can visit my physcian.  In turn, that means I get to do an extended period of research.  I hope.

Still and all, I could do without the insomnia caused by my relatively severe arthritis.  It got me out of bed this morning at about 0230 simply due to the fact that my right leg, foot and ankle were screaming at me all night, and no amount of analgesic could quiet them down.  

Website

With the help of Mike Irving, I am updating my website and finally have added a page of links to my online “publications.”  Or at least those that I can find.  Over the years, a large number of articles, most belonging to Aquarium.Net and Aquarium Frontiers Online, have vanished as those sites have disappeared into the ether.  Fortunately, most of the stuff that vanished was updated and revised and exists online in these, more recent, publications.  

Other Stuff

Today, I have to do some other, mostly outdoor chores, as well.  Between that, and the research prep, I will be a busy boy.

So… Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It is off to work I go….

More later,

Until then,

Cheers,

Diodogorgia Research

The trials that I was setting up for in the last post worked.  After about an hour, the specimen was fully inflated, and the runs commenced.  And wonder of wonders, they worked as they should have.  The specimen remained inflated, the number of Artemia that were in the runs remained consistent and the results appeared to be reasonable.  I won’t know the exact magnitude of the results until I do the final analyses, probably after the final set of planned runs, but it is heartening to have the controls and the experimental values in the proper relationships.

I now have 5 more sets of trial runs planned.  One more at 4 cm/sec, then 2 more each at 2 cm/sec and 32 cm/sec.  The latter ones would duplicate some of the first trials I did more than a year ago, and I think for my peace of mind, that I will want them done over, to ensure consistency of methodology.

I have just ordered a single Diodogorgia specimen from Marine Depot Live.  It is to arrive on Tuesday.  So… We shall see if that occurs.  I have not had too much good luck with that supplier, but most of the problems have occurred in the winter.  I sincerely hope no specimens will freeze in our late July weather.  I will defer any further tests until this new specimen arrives.  If it is in good shape, I hope to be able to do the remaining runs one after another, and get them out of the way.  Of course, I also have to make videos of the animals feeding at each of the feeding velocities, under both laminar and turbulent flow. 

In the best of all possible worlds, this all will take me about 2 weeks.  The best of all worlds will not occur, of course, but with some luck I should be done by the end of August.  Then the analyses will commence.

Lisbon

I have been asked to present a talk or two at the anniversary celebration of the Portuguese online bulletin board, ”reefforum,” in Lisbon on the 27th of September, and I have accepted.  This promises to be a fun event, and I hope to present a lot of my research findings there as well as, perhaps, some other stuff.

More later…

Until then,

Cheers!!!