As part of one inquiry case, we will be exploring the issues surrounding freshwater mussels in the Great Lakes region, including the native diversity and the impacts of invasions by zebra mussels and quagga mussels.

Last week I was in Michigan with my friend and colleague Dave Zanatta of Central Michigan University filming vignettes about mussel research. Here is just a sample (note: unedited and unannotated) of the footage we shot.

I wonder who would win in a fight, Leviathan or Megalodon?

Epic whale-eating contest!

Check it out at Wired here!

Polar Bear from Plane Stupid on Vimeo.

Hat tip: The Z-Letter

Genome 10K: A Proposal to Obtain Whole-Genome Sequence for 10 000 Vertebrate Species

Genome 10K Community of Scientists

The human genome project has been recently complemented by whole-genome assessment sequence of 32 mammals and 24 nonmammalian vertebrate species suitable for comparative genomic analyses. Here we anticipate a precipitous drop in costs and increase in sequencing efficiency, with concomitant development of improved annotation technology and, therefore, propose to create a collection of tissue and DNA specimens for 10 000 vertebrate species specifically designated for whole-genome sequencing in the very near future. For this purpose, we, the Genome 10K Community of Scientists (G10KCOS), will assemble and allocate a biospecimen collection of some 16 203 representative vertebrate species spanning evolutionary diversity across living mammals, birds, nonavian reptiles, amphibians, and fishes (ca. 60 000 living species). In this proposal, we present precise counts for these 16 203 individual species with specimens presently tagged and stipulated for DNA sequencing by the G10KCOS. DNA sequencing has ushered in a new era of investigation in the biological sciences, allowing us to embark for the first time on a truly comprehensive study of vertebrate evolution, the results of which will touch nearly every aspect of vertebrate biological enquiry.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091104/full/462021a.html

http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=3333

http://genome10k.soe.ucsc.edu/

• Summer plan

Florida to Guelph:

• Part I, Day 1
• Part I, Day 2
• Part I, Day 3
• Part I, Day 4
• Part I, Day 5
• Part I, Day 6
• Part I, Day 7
• Part I, Day 8
• Part I, Day 9
• Part I, Day 10
• Part I, Day 11
• Part I, Day 12
• Part I, Day 13
• Part I, Day 14
• Part I, Day 15
• Part I, Day 16
• Part I, Day 17

• Interlude I

Guelph to Thompson:

• Part II, Day 1
• Part II, Day 2
• Part II, Day 3
• Part II, Day 4
• Part II, Day 5
• Part II, Day 6
• Part II, Day 7
• Part II, Day 8
• Part II, Day 9
• Part II, Day 10

• Interlude II

Churchill:

• Part III, Day 1
• Part III, Day 2
• Part III, Day 3
• Part III, Day 4
• Part III, Day 5
• Part III, Day 6
• Part III, Day 7
• Part III, Day 8
• Part III, Day 9
• Coming soon

Resolute and True Love:

• Coming soon

On the other hand, most parasites are much smaller than their hosts, and so it has typically been assumed that they contribute a negligible fraction to any particular ecosystem’s total biomass. Nuh-uh. In a report published in Nature this week, Kuris and colleagues presented five years’ worth of analyses of estuaries in California and Baja California in which they measured the amount of biomass made up of parasites and free-living organisms.

In sum, Kuris et al. (2008) examined 138 species of infectious agents, 199 species of free-living animals (including invertebrates as well as fishes and birds), and 15 species of free-living plants in their study. They found that plants contributed the most biomass to all three of the estuaries they studied, followed by groups such as snails, bivalves, and crabs. Parasites made up only about 0.2% to 1.2% of the animal biomass of each environment, and on average parasite groups had biomasses 1000 times lower than the average free-living group. However, as Kuris et al. (2008) report,

Certain parasitic groups dominated the parasite biomass, reaching levels similar to those of common free-living groups. For instance, the biomass of trematode worms was comparable to that of the fishes, burrowing shrimps, polychaetes or small arthropods. In all estuaries, trematode biomass exceeded bird biomass by threefold to ninefold.

In other words, parasites make up a larger fraction of the living matter in these environments than do the top predators. In particular, parasites that castrate their hosts (i.e., prevent them from diverting resources into reproductive effort) were the most abundant. The world is not fishy or feathery, it is fluky.

Wikipedia image

So, whereas the famous quote attributed to J.B.S. Haldane that if there is a creator he must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles” still applies, it may be that he has an even more pronounced affection for parasites. Especially the castrating sort.

_____

Kuris, A.M., R.F. Hechinger, J.C. Shaw, K.L. Whitney, L. Aguirre-Macedo, C.A. Boch, A.P. Dobson, E.J. Dunham, B.L. Fredensborg, T.C. Huspeni, J. Lorda, L. Mababa, F.T. Mancini, A.B. Mora, M. Pickering, N.L. Talhouk, M.E. Torchin, and K.D. Lafferty. 2008. Ecosystem energetic implications of parasite and free-living biomass in three estuaries. Nature 454: 515-518.

Update: For more detailed discussions, see Not Exactly Rocket Science and keep your eyes open for a post at The Loom.

But…

1. It has one group of “prokaryotes”, Kingdom Monera, which is pretty old school. (Same goes for “Protists“). You don’t like dividing the Archaea and Bacteria? Ok, but how about a note that many people now consider this one of the deepest divisions of life? If they can mention something as esoteric to most readers as the phylogenetic species concept, surely they could include a brief line about, you know, phylogenetic groupings at the highest level.

2. And I quote:

This is a taxonomic view of life on earth — based on systematic classifications — which challenges our typical “mammal-centric” understanding of the world around us. Today there is increasing awareness of the enormous diversity of life on earth, but few people probably appreciate the fact that the Species-Scape is completely dominated by multilegged (more than 4 legs) and legless animals, fungi and microbes. Mammals, with a mere 4,000 species, are dwarfed by “lower” animals.

Do we really have to use a misconception to correct a misconception?

• Amphibian Species of the World
• AmphibiaWeb
• AviBase
• Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD)
• Catalogue of Life
• Encyclopedia of Life
• Deep Green
• FishBase
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)
• IUCN Red List
• Mammal Species of the World
• NCBI Entrez Taxonomy
• Nearctic Spider Database
• Reptile Database
• Species 2000
• Tree of Life
• World Biodiversity Database