This 29 April 2021 video says about itself:
Watch a baby mantis shrimp punch in slow motion | Science News
A larval mantis shrimp (Gonodactylaceus falcatus) — filmed at 2,000 frames per second and played back at 3 percent speed — retracts and locks its attack arm to store energy before releasing a strike. New research shows these larvae begin unleashing their punches by the time they are 9 days old.
Read more here.
This February 2019 video is about saving an Omani crab which had got caught in a fishing net.
From the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research:
Crabs are key to ecology and economy in Oman
Importance of crabs should be considered when looking at increasing human pressure on Barr Al Hikman nature reserve
October 8, 2020
The intertidal mudflats of Barr Al Hikman, a nature reserve at the south-east coast of the Sultanate Oman, are crucial nursery grounds for numerous crab species. In return, these crabs are a vital element of the ecology, as well as the regional economy, a new publication in the scientific journal Hydrobiologia shows. ‘These important functions of the crabs should be considered when looking at the increasing human pressure on this nature reserve’, first author and NIOZ-researcher Roeland Bom says.
Blue swimming crab
The mudflats of Barr Al Hikman are home to almost thirty crab species. For his research, Bom, together with colleagues in The Netherlands and at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, looked at the ecology of the two most abundant species. Bom: ‘Barr Al Hikman is also home to the blue swimming crab Portunus segnis. That is the species caught by local fishermen. This crab uses the mudflats of Barr Al Hikman as nursery grounds.’
The counts of Bom and his colleagues show, that there are millions and millions of these crabs in Barr Al Hikman. They are food to hundreds of thousands of birds, both migrating species, as well as birds breeding in the area, such as crab plovers. The crabs live in holes in the ground. They forage on the seagrass beds that are still abundant in Barr Al Hikman. ‘Apart from the high primary production (algae) in Barr al Hikman, this reserve is also well suited for crabs because of the vastness of the area’, Bom assumes. ‘The slopes of the mudflats are very gentle, so at low tide, the crabs have an immense area at their disposition.’
Eco value
The value of the crabs is not just ecological, Bom stresses. “Local fishermen that catch the blue swimming crabs, distribute them not only through Oman, but also through the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and even to Japan. At approximately € 2,- per kilo, these crabs represent an important economic pillar, both under the region around Barr Al Hikman, as well as for the whole of Oman.’
Reserve
The protection of the reserve of Barr Al Hikman is limited to national legislation. Efforts to acknowledge this reserve under the international Ramsar-convention were never effectuated. There is, however, increasing human pressure on the mudflats of Barr Al Hikman, the authors describe, that would justify further protection. For example, there are well-developed plans to start shrimp farming around this intertidal area. ‘When looking at the cost and benefits of these activities, it is important to look at the role of this reserve in the local ecology, as well as in the broader ecology of the many migratory birds that use the area’, Bom says. ‘Moreover, our research shows that the unique ecosystem of Barr Al Hikman plays a key role in the economy as well.’
This 2019 video from Spain is called Phallocryptus spinosa en las Salinas de Roquetas de Mar.
From ScienceDaily:
New species of freshwater crustacea found in the hottest place on Earth
September 3, 2020
A new species of freshwater Crustacea has been discovered during an expedition of the desert Lut, known as the hottest place on Earth.
The newly identified species belongs to the genus Phallocryptus of which only four species were previously known from different arid and semiarid regions.
Dr Hossein Rajaei from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History and Dr Alexander V Rudov from Tehran University made the discovery during an expedition of Lut to better understand the desert’s ecology, biodiversity, geomorphology and paleontology.
Further scientific examinations of the specimens by co-author Dr Martin Schwentner, Crustacea specialist from the Natural History Museum of Vienna, stated that they belong to a new species of freshwater Crustacea.
Publishing their findings in Zoology in the Middle East, the biologists name the new species Phallocryptus fahimii, in honor of the Iranian conservation biologist, Hadi Fahimi, who took part in the 2017 expedition and sadly died in an airplane crash in 2018.
Dr Rajaei, an entomologist from State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, who actually found the species in a small seasonal lake in southern part of the desert says the discovery is “sensational.”
“During an expedition to such an extreme place you are always on alert, in particular when finding water. Discovering crustaceans in this otherwise hot and dry environment was really sensational.”
The team’s study explains how Phallocryptus fahimii differs in its overall morphology and its genetics from all other known Phallocryptus species.
Dr Schwentner, who has worked with similar crustaceans from the Australian deserts in the past, adds: “These Crustaceans are able to survive for decades in the dried-out sediment and will hatch in an upcoming wet season, when the aquatic habitat refills. They are perfectly adapted to live in deserts environments. Their ability to survive even in the Lut desert highlights their resilience.”
The Lut desert — also known as Dasht-e Lut — is the second largest desert in Iran.
Located between 33° and 28° parallels and with its 51,800 km2 larger than Switzerland, this desert holds the current record for the highest ever-recorded surface temperature. Based on 2006 satellite measurements, the NASA reported a record surface temperature of 70.7°C, which more recently has been increased to even 80.3°C. Dark pebbles that heat up are one of the causes of these record temperatures. Mean daily temperatures range from -2.6°C in winter to 50.4°C in summer with annual precipitation not exceeding 30 mm per year.
Almost deprived of vegetation, the Lut desert harbors a diverse animal life, but no permanent aquatic biotops (such as ponds).
After rain falls, non-permanent astatic water bodies are filled including the Rud-e-Shur river from north-western Lut.
Here a diverse community of Archaea has been described but aquatic life in the Lut remains highly limited, which makes this find particularly rare.
This 2015 video is about a Macropodia sp. spider crab.
From ScienceDaily:
Neglected for over a century, Black sea spider crab re-described
September 1, 2020
Even though recognised in the Mediterranean Sea, the Macropodia czernjawskii spider crab was ignored by scientists (even by its namesake Vladimir Czernyavsky) in the regional faunal accounts of the Black Sea for more than a century. At the same time, although other species of the genus have been listed as Black sea fauna, those listings are mostly wrong and occurred either due to historical circumstances or misidentifications.
Now, scientists re-describe this, most likely, only species of the genus occurring in the Black Sea in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
The spider crab genus Macropodia was discovered in 1814 and currently includes 18 species, mostly occurring in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The marine fauna of the Black Sea is predominantly of Mediterranean origin and Macropodia czernjawskii was firstly discovered in the Black Sea in 1880, but afterwards, its presence there was largely ignored by the scientists.
After the revision of available type specimens from all available collections in the Russian museums and the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt-on-Main, as well as newly collected material in the Black Sea and the North-East Atlantic, a research team of scientists, led by Dr Vassily Spiridonov from Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of Russian Academy of Sciences, re-described Macropodia czernjawskii and provided the new data on its records and updated its ecological characteristics.
“The analysis of the molecular genetic barcode (COI) of the available material of Macropodia species indicated that M. czernjawskii is a very distinct species while M. parva should be synonimised with M. rostrata, and M. longipes is a synonym of M. tenuirostris,” states Dr Spiridonov sharing the details of the genus analysis.
All Macropodia species have epibiosis and M. czernjawskii is no exception: almost all examined crabs in 2008-2018 collections had significant epibiosis. It normally consists of algae and cyanobacteria and, particularly, a non-indigenous species of red alga Bonnemaisonia hamifera, officially reported in 2015 at the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, was found in the epibiosis of M. czernjawskii four years earlier.
“It improves our understanding of its invasion history. Museum and monitoring collections of species with abundant epibiosis (in particular inachid crabs) can be used as an additional tool to record and monitor introduction and establishments of sessile non-indigenous species,” suggests Dr Spiridonov.
This 22 May 2020 video from the Netherlands is about a spoonbill trying to eat an invasive, originally American, crayfish.
Translated from Utrecht University in the Netherlands today:
Oldest woodlouse in the Netherlands discovered in Winterswijk quarry
A fossil woodlouse from the Triassic age, aged between 247 and 242 million years, has been discovered in the Winterswijk quarry. Never before has such an old woodlouse fossil been found in the Netherlands. It also turns out to be a new species. The find is extra special because fossil woodlice are extremely rare: until recently only nine species from the Triassic were known worldwide. The special fossil can be admired from 8 June on in Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
Woodlice do not only live in dark places or under stones: about half of all woodlouse species live in the sea. This in itself is not remarkable since woodlice are closely related to crabs and lobsters. The Winterswijk woodlouse also lived in the sea. The researchers named the new species Gelrincola winterswijkensis after the fossil site.
Gelrincola means ‘inhabitant of Gelderland province’.
The first woodlice appeared about 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous. There are not many remains as ancient as Gelrincola winterswijkensis. Only ten species of woodlice are known from before the Triassic. More woodlice species are known from the eras after the Triassic. Today, more than ten thousand species of these crustaceans live.
The Winterswijk animal originates from the middle Triassic, a period of 247 to 242 million years ago. Back then Winterswijk was located on the edge of a large inland sea, the so-called Muschelkalk Sea. Along the coast of this Muschelkalk Sea there were extensive tidal plains where many remains of animals have been preserved in the lime mud. In Winterswijk you will find fossils from the sea as well as remains of animals that lived on land.
This yields a wide variety of fossils, including marine reptiles (such as Nothosaurus), fish, seashells, snails, ammonites, lobsters, a horseshoe crab, plant remains, pollen grains, footprints of terrestrial reptiles, and even fossil insects. So now a marine woodlouse can be added to this fossil biodiversity. This creates an increasingly complete picture of the ecosystem of the time. …
In our country, rocks from that interesting period only occur in the Winterswijk quarry.
This summer Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Utrecht University will continue to search for fossils there. A new visitors centre will be built next to the quarry, where the most important fossils from the quarry will be exhibited.
This 2016 video from Britain is about European lobsters.
From the University of Exeter in England:
New test identifies lobster hybrids
May 11, 2020
Scientists have developed a test that can identify hybrids resulting from crossbreeding between European and American lobsters.
The Klu Klux Klan in the USA will consider these lobsters ‘communists’. As they claim that ‘race mixing’ is ‘communism’. As these picture show. They also show that Donald Trump’s anti-coronavirus health ‘Flu Klux Klan‘ consider social distancing ‘communist.’
American lobsters have occasionally escaped or been released into European waters after being imported for the seafood market.
Experts have long feared they could threaten European lobsters by introducing disease or establishing as an invasive species.
Hybridisation — when a “pure” species is threatened at a genetic level via interbreeding with a different but related species — had been less of a concern because lab studies suggested European and American lobsters were reluctant to mate.
However, when an American lobster female was found bearing eggs in a fjord in Sweden, University of Exeter researchers tested the offspring and found they were “clearly distinct” from both European and American lobsters.
“We had just developed a genetic test for seafood traceability that could separate any American lobsters mislabelled as more expensive European equivalents once they’ve been cooked and shell colouration is no longer a useful indicator of the species,” said Dr Charlie Ellis, of the University of Exeter.
“What we found when we tested these offspring is that they came out exactly in the middle of this separation — half American and half European — so these lobsters were hybrids.”
This has potentially concerning implications for the lobster industry and conservation efforts, and Dr Ellis says further research is required to assess the extent of the threat.
“Until recently, it was thought that American and European lobsters would avoid crossbreeding, but this introduced American female has mated with a native European male, probably because she was unable to find an American male,” he said.
“We now need to check whether any mature adult hybrids are fertile, because if they are then they have the ability to spread these unwanted American genes far and wide across our native lobster stocks.”
Working with collaborators from the University of Gothenburg who originally found the hybrid egg clutch, the researchers say their study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, highlights the vital use of genetics to distinguish hybrid lobsters which might look almost identical to a pure strain.
“It is particularly concerning that we seem to have found American lobster genes in one of our lobster reserves,” said Linda Svanberg of the Gothenburg team.
“The better news is we now have this genetic tool to test lobsters or their eggs for hybridisation,” added Dr Jamie Stevens, leader of the research which was funded by an EU grant through the Agritech Cornwall scheme, “so we can use it track the spread of these ‘alien’ genes to assess how big a threat this presents to our native lobster species.”
The team advise that, for a range of conservation reasons including potential contact with American lobsters, it is important that the general public never release a marketed lobster back into the wild, even our native species.
Dr Tom Jenkins said: “Although we appreciate that all animal-lovers have concern for the fate of individual animals, in this case the rescue of one animal might endanger the health of the entire wild population, so once a lobster has entered the seafood supply chain that’s where it should stay.”
This 22 April 2020 video from the USA says about itself:
How do barnacles survive environmental changes? Long-term work by a Brown University research team, with funding from the National Science Foundation, has confirmed that a central metabolic protein Mpi and the gene encoding the protein is what helps the barnacle survive extreme environmental changes.
Different versions of the Mpi enzyme are present at different levels, depending on where the barnacles have settled in the rocky shoreline. One form performs well under high stress, like on a hot day at low tide; the other form does better under low stress. This allows barnacles to survive and prosper in fluctuating extremes and has prepared them for success in an ever-changing environment.
This 8 April 2020 video says about itself:
Man finds 12-million-year-old fossil, then spends 15 hours to expose crab hidden in stone
This timelapse footage shows an amateur palaeontologist uncovering an ancient crab fossil that he says is “12-million-years-old.”
The fossil, found on a beach in Christchurch, is encased in rock and Morne (Mamlambo on YouTube) carefully picks it away revealing the crab’s claws and shell.
Morne told Newsflare: “I found a fossil crab on a beach in New Zealand and then used an air scribe to remove the rock to show the fossil crab. It took about 10 hours and I made a timelapse of it.
“It [the fossil] is dated by the age of the rock it is found in, Miocene era in this case. The rock layers have been dated by some geologists using a variety of techniques, I use that information to date it. It isn’t very specific, rather a range.
“The species is a Tumidocarcinus giganteus. Found in New Zealand.”
Dear Kitty. Some blog 