Becoming a Cephalopod Biologist

Internship coming to a close... time to say goodbye sniff

2005-04-26T11:44:00.000-04:00

Well, this is the last week of my internship at MBL. I've seriously been considering just setting up a cot here in the office as I have a lot I want to try and finish before I leave. It's been a while since I last updated, but that's just because I've been doing so much since then.

Do get caught up, we finished the colorblind experiment, which means I did finish cutting out all those images (yay!) However, Roger Hanlon liked the idea of having a cuttlefish completely separate from its substrate so much that in truth, I never really finished.

I did some experiments to help out with an ongoing ontogeny experiment dealing with the development of the disruptive pattern in cuttlefish, specifically Sepia officinalis (of course) using once again checkerboards to evoke the disruptive pattern. However, this time instead of changing the intensity, the size of the squares relative to the cuttle's white square were changed. It's been shown that when the squares are fairly small (say an area of 4% relative to the area of the white square) the animal produces a mottled pattern. When the squares start to get around 100% and larger than the white square the animal becomes more and more uniform. The ideal size square to produce a disruptive pattern is one that is slightly smaller than the animal's white square, for the most part regardless of the animal's age.

I've also been working on my own project, again dealing with evoking different camouflage patterns. However, this project involved working with octopuses! For those that don't know, octopuses are much harder to work with than cuttlefish. Not only will they not simply sit still for you to film, some will simply take it upon themselves to try and leave the experimental tank! So because of this, certain barriers had to be crossed but I was happy with the results I was able to obtain with three different species using two different substrates.

I'll never forget anyone I worked with, mainly because there's a good chance I'm going to be seeing them again while I'm working on my graduate studies :) but also because I learned a lot from everyone there and was made to feel at home. So to Roger, Lydia, Alex, Janice, Erica, Rox, and everyone else, thanks for a great experience!

The price of research

2005-03-18T14:47:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned before, behavioral research in the lab can be stressful on your subjects, and sometimes animals pay a heavy price, taking a serious turn for the worse literally overnight. This was the case a few days ago when one of our colorblind experimental animals was looking very poorly. He was not eating well, he was floating, his color was bad, his mantle was funny looking, and he seemed to have some sort of infection and lesion. The decision was made to euthanize him. Although we have lost several animals since I began my internship, this was the first time I actually assisted in euthanizing one, and it was a sad day for me. The process is done by slowly adding 100% ethanol to the animal's seawater until it gradually slows down and then dies. It ends up being about a 10% ethanol solution that will work. The animal care staff informed me that this is the most humane way they have found. And in truth, who wouldn't like to get drunk before they go. *sigh* It's sad that animals must pay the price for research, but it's a fact that every biologist must come to terms with. Rest in peace little cuttlefish.

The Origin of Motility in Eukaryotes

2005-03-16T14:53:00.000-05:00

I was able to set aside my normal duties today and attend a lecture by a visiting professor, Dr. Lynn Margulis. She is a professor at UMASS-Amherst. Her talk concerned the origin of movement and motility in eukaryotes. It was a very facinating lecture. She believes that motility arose from a symbiosis of two bacteria, a spirochaete and an archaebacteria. This goes along with the theory of how mitochondria and plastids developed, called the Serial Endosymbiosis Theory.

Dr. Margulis' research seems to support her hypothesis thus far. She has found current marine models which support this; instead of an archaebacterium though, Thiodendron is symbiotic with a spirochaete. Also, cytoplasm in the cells produce relatively large amounts of sulfide, which one would expect as a remnant from the original syntropy of hydrogen sulfide oxidizing spirochaetes and sulfur oxidizing archaebacteria. Her next step is to try and find symbiotic archaebacteria and spirochaetes in Woods Hole, MA.

Paging Dr. Karena!

2005-03-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

There's something about using a syringe that makes me feel so.... medical!

Sometimes one of our animals becomes sick or is just not acting like its normal, active, hungry self. When this happens, we usually put it on antibiotics. We do this by injecting its normal diet of fish chunks with Baytril or chloramphenicol. However, when the animal refuses to eat, we need to try and tempt it with something yummier, which usually translates to live prey. This ends up being something like grass shrimp which we usually have on hand.

Now, you may be wondering how I go about getting the antibiotic into something as squirmy as a shrimp (or you may be wondering just how squirmy a shrimp is, in which case the answer is very much so). Well, wonder no more faithful readers for I shall enlighten you. Grass shrimp are very small and only grow to a maximum of about 2 inches. Most of the ones we feed to the cephalopods never even reach that size (MUAHAAHAHAHA....ahem). You may think it would be easiest to simply inject the antibiotic into the underside of the shrimp which is the softest side, however this typically results in a very inanimate shrimp which isn't very interesting to an octopus or cuttlefish, especially one not having such a great day. So it's actually best to try and gently insert the needle just under the carapace on the back and inject the antibiotic that way. All of this needs to be done while carefully holding onto the shrimp which obviously isn't thrilled with the whole procedure and would rather take its chances bouncing off into the unkown (don't ask me why, shrimps have small brains).

However, it's worth it when the your little invalid octopus or cuttlefish realizes what a special treat it's getting :)

Sometimes cuttlefish can be cuddly

2005-03-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

When working with animals enough, you get to know the personalities of certain individuals, especially with animals like cephalopods which have large brains. I've come to like one little cuttlefish in particular who is always very curious about me. He's always willing to rise to the surface, and peer up at me; I can't help but wonder what is going on inside that brain. He even seems to like the attention and will tolerate my clumsy attempts at petting him- up to a point. You're probably wondering how you would go about petting a little cuttlefish which happens to be as long as your index finger. I basically just gently touch him with the tip of a finger, just barely touching him. You just can't do this with cuttlefish without them freaking out but this little guy doesn't seem to mind so much. In fact, he's even curious enough to reciprocate with his arms sometimes. I haven't given him a name yet and I don't know if I can as it will be hard to say goodbye when my internship is over, but I thought I would introduce you to this special little guy.

Why you should never invite a cuttlefish to dinner

2005-03-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Although I'm interested in all cephalopods, I've been learning the most about cuttlefish because that's what we have the most here at MRC. And one thing I've noticed is that cuttlefish have absolutely atrocious table manners. As I may have mentioned, nearly everyone gets fed once a day in the morning. When I arrive, everything is calm and quiet in cuttlefishville. Once they see me coming, a few curious individuals will perk up and wonder when they will get their breakfast.

However, bedlam quickly ensues once I break out the fish. It's no-more-Mr.-Nice-Cuttlefish as everyone rushes to get their share and their neighbor's share if they can manage it.

No one thinks twice about stealing a piece of food or two even if they are currently munching on some already. And if another cuttlefish nabs the piece of fish you were going for, then they may just as easily become a tasty morsel. If a cuttlefish is lucky, he can dodge and escape using ink blobs. If he's not, he can end up badly scarred.

And just as quickly as it started, the mad dash for food is over.

Everyone goes back to their corner until the next cuttlefish quibble. Of course, no one bothers to clean up after themselves.

Instead, they leave their discarded leftovers intermingled with their waste for me to take care of for them. For those of you who've never seen it, this picture is cuttlefish poop.

And what do I get for my trouble? Ink in the face. Ungrateful creatures. Instead of cuttlefish, they should be called cuttlepigs.

Octopus on the lam!

2005-03-04T09:33:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned before, we have five octopuses. One large O. vulgaris, two medium sized O. bimaculoides, and three small O. joubini. Well, while feeding them this morning, I found one was not where he was supposed to be and it's not the one you may expect. I was a little surprised to find the delicious (?) morsel of capelin I offered this morning was not eagerly grabbed by waiting arms as usual and upon closer inspection of the little tube which makes up the home of one of our pygmy octopuses, I found it empty (!!!). Well, needless to say, I was a bit stunned. We set a brick on each of the lids of the tanks to prevent escapes, however this little guy decided he was Hercules, or so he will be dubbed from now on, as he was able to lift up the lid, brick and all, and left behind part of an arm as evidence of his daring dash to freedom. Unfortunately, the area beyond the tank was not the wide open ocean he had hoped for and alas he really had nowhere else to go so I found him sitting somewhat confused right next to his neighbor's tank. With the help of my animal care supervisor, Janice, I was able to recapture the renegade octopus and replace him unharmed back into his tank, safe and sound. To show I had no hard feelings, I even offered him a piece of capelin, which he promptly accepted as though nothing had happened.

Here's the little renegade himself giving me the eye after his escapade. Isn't he a bold one?

Is an intern's work ever done? God I hope so... Alt. Title I'm going to be a Photoshop Wiz when this is all over

2005-02-28T14:15:00.000-05:00

Part of being an intern is getting to do all the boring, mundane stuff that would otherwise bog down the researchers (whee). I accept that. It's still important work that needs to get done. But by god can it get mind-blowingly boring! Case in point... for the colorblind research... we had 16 checkerboard substrates and 10 experimental animals. Yours truly also got to run the black and white control experiments on each animal just to get a baseline for each one's disruptive pattern.

Each experiment ran for 30 minutes, with the camera recording 1 second every 30 seconds. That's 60 "images". Alex, the Portuguese PhD student gets to go through all those tapes and choose the 10 best images to import into jpegs. Are you keeping track? Ok, now I take those images, copy and paste the cuttlefish out of the substrate and onto a white background and save it to a new file with a random number name so Alex and Lydia can grade it without bias to animal or substrate. Not to mention adjusting the lighting or contrast if the image came out too dark or out of focus which often happened. So if you've been crunching numbers, and I know you have, admit it, that's 16 substrates x 10 animals x 10 images per animals = 1600. Oh, don't forget another 90 from the control (since an animal died), so 1690 images to format in total. SIIIGGGGGHHHHH.

Anyway, here's an example of my work. Try to contain yourself.

Cuttlefish Torture Chamber... I mean, experimental tank

2005-02-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

Here is where all of these hours (and yes, literally hours) of video capture occur.

The reason it takes so long is because we need to give the cuttlefish time to acclimate to its new surroundings which are understandingly very stressful: bright lights, unnatural checkboard substrate, big thing which follows its every movement (the camera, not me). Each cuttlefish is different and reacts differently. Some acclimate quickly and settle quickly. Some are slower to settle. Some seem to sleep through the whole experiment and some almost seem like they are twiddling their thumbs, er, their arms. Some just seem to like to ink and piss you off. Each one is an individual.

It's not easying seeing green

2005-02-25T07:08:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned before, the current big project that we're working on right now deals with whether or not cuttlefish are colorblind. The current data supports that they have only one visual pigment that allows them to see in shades of green. In order to test this, Lydia constructed 18 checkerboard substrates in which a green checker remained constant and the intensity of the other checker varied from white to black. At some point, the intensity of the gray match that of the green. It is believed that the cuttlefish would not be able to distinguish this substrate from the others. And so far, that's what the data appears to indicate. The way we tell this is by lots and lots of video data :P It is already known that cuttlefish put on a disruptive pattern on a high contrast substrate.

If the substrate is uniform, or they perceive it to be, then the pattern will be as well.

Here is a sample of what we have been seeing which seems to indicate that cuttlefish are indeed colorblind.

At Substrate 1, white and green, which is a high contrast substrate, a disruptive pattern is shown.

At Substrate 8, in which the intensity of the gray and green are match, a uniform pattern is shown.

At Substrate 16, black and green which also happens to be the highest contrast substrate besides black and white, a strong disruptive is shown.

This study also gave insight onto the contrast detection of Sepia officinalis. It would be expected that since they appear to be colorblind, they would have very good contrast detection to enable such remarkable camouflage abilities. However, it appears to be only around 20%.

The end of my first week

2005-02-04T22:57:00.000-05:00

I began Friday with quite an interesting surprise, and of course I left my camera at home so I have no photographic documentation so show. I was checking on the cuttlefish and came upon two who at first glace appeared to be mating as S. officinalis mate head-to-head.

However, it turns out this was a deadly embrace instead of an amorous one. One cuttlefish decided it just couldn't deal with having another one giving it the eye, and on an empty stomach no less. All cephalopods can be cannibalists, as one discovered the hard way.

Week 1, Day 4

2005-02-03T19:22:00.000-05:00

The cephalopods in the lab eat a variety of food such as capelin, herring, and squid, depending on what's on hand. When it was time to prepare some more, I decided to do it myself, as after all, I'm the one responsible for them during my internship. The menu for today consisted of capelin.

I discovered the joys of preparing this savory dish for the cephalopods, of which there are none, at least not for me. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though.

Dr. Hanlon held a lab meeting in the afternoon to discuss current research projects and future ideas for projects, which include the reflective properties of skin,the abilities to control the "whiteness" of skin through leucophores, the evocation of the mottled pattern, and the testing for colorblindess in Sepia officinalis. He went over where everyone was and where everyone needed to be in their respective responsibilities. Even I was given some tasks to complete, which mainly include helping Lydia and Alex (a graduate student) with their projects by running experiments and collecting data. Lydia plans on continuing a study into testing colorblindness by using blue and yellow checkerboard substrates and Alex is working with the ontogentic development of the disruptive pattern.

Week 1, Day 3

2005-02-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

In addition to my daily duties, I was able to help feed the cod housed in the tank room.

The cod we have are huge, about the size of large dogs, although I hear they get up to six feet long. They are also quite attractive fish, with very pretty leopard spots.

The rest of the day was spent looking for and making the necessary materials to get a new lab set up completed so I can begin doing experiments with the cuttlefish.

Week 1, Day 2

2005-02-01T22:24:00.000-05:00

Husbandry is a part of my daily schedule. I've been told to think of the cuttlefish as mine :) The group you see below is just a small sampling of the nearly 90 cuttlefish we have, most of which are juveniles.

We also have 6 octopuses (2 different species), but they spent a lot of their time hiding. The one in the picture is the largest one we have and is an Octopus bimaculoides. As you can see, we have to take measures to ensure its incarceration. Otherwise, they'll find their way out and will eventually be found wandering around if they're lucky and dead if they're not.

One of the great things about interning at MBL is that there are frequently guest speakers presenting new and interesting research. I was able to attend a talk by Dr. Tyrone Hayes from Berkeley. He's doing research on the endocrine effects of the herbicide atrazine on frogs, and subsequently, the people who are exposed to it- which is basically everyone. For more information on Dr. Hayes and his research, go here.

The rest of the day was uneventful, as first weeks usually are. They typically require a lot of paperwork, lab safety videos (you gotta love those shots of people "accidentally" drinking out of beakers and pipetting by mouth), and rummaging through equipment wondering where the previous intern left that ac adapter.

First Day on the Job

2005-01-31T13:38:00.000-05:00

Today was my first day as an intern at the Marine Resources Center, a part of the Marine Biological Laboratory. It was a fairly quiet day with little to do. I started off my day bright and early (7:00am) in order to get pictures for all you dedicated readers so I hope you appreciate them :) There are too many to add to one post, but I'll include them throughout the blog as I go along.

My introduction in animal care began at 7:30 am in our Mariculture Room and Zebrafish Culture Room. Just a small portion of the animals that MBL houses. I did water quality tests today, checking temperature, pH, nitrite, nitrate, ammonia, and alkalinity levels. So my chemistry lab experience has paid off once again (for those of you interested in pursuing a career in biological, I definitely recommend getting experience in physics or chemistry).

I also got to siphon out the Aplysia tank, which can get pretty scummy. Aplysia californica is a large sea-slug.

The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful. The post-doc I'm going to be assisting came in later in the moring, so I was given some background material to read by Dr. Hanlon. The project I will be working on involves the use of disruptive color patterns and determining color vision. Interesting stuff. For more information, go here.

Once Lydia (the post-doc) arrived, I was able to watch her set up the experiment which consists of randomly choosing one of 11 juvenile Sepia and placing it on one of 10 randomly chosen checkerboard patterns and videotaping the animal. The checkerboards range from black and white to black and green to grey and green to green and white. This gives the cuttlefish a range of contrasts.

Welcome to the North Pole... I mean, Massachusetts

2005-01-31T12:35:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is a little late in posting, as I arrived in MA on Friday night, but I just had to comment on the massive quantities of snow that have blanketed Cape Cod. It's quite staggering, especially when you're faced with the prospect of shovelling that massive quantity of snow out of your driveway :P

Brrrr.....

2005-01-24T07:26:00.000-05:00

Well, the storm is over. We didn't get as much snow as I thought we would. However, I did note that the area I'll be living in once I get to MA got about 3 feet (yikes!). Unfortunately, we got left with bitter cold temps. *shiver* Definitely makes it harder to get up early to study. Yup, I take my GRE's in about 4.5 hours. So if you're so inclined, perhaps you can send a little extra "smartness" my way. Until then, I'll maintain my cool facade of serenity.

Snowed In

2005-01-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

PA is supposed to get dumped on by a big snowstorm this weekend so my plans to study for my GRE shouldn't be interrupted too often. I take the general test on Monday. I've already taken the subject test in Biology and managed an 810 (92nd percentile). Considering how frantic I was before the test, I'm rather happy with the results. However, it's been difficult getting into a studying mindset. Especially when there are more interesting things happening outside my window.

Winter Wonderland? Taken from my living room window- the white expanse past the bench is (was) a lake. What looks like fog is actually lots of little snowflakes.

One week to go

2005-01-21T16:16:00.000-05:00

I'm creating this blog with two primary purposes: because I need to log my activities as an intern at the Marine Biological Laboratory and so I keep track of the steps I take to becoming a cephalopod biologist with the hopes it will someday come of use (either to myself or someone else). My internship starts in 10 days, but I'll be leaving for MA on the 28th. I'm excited about the opportunity that awaits me, but at the same time I'm going to miss my husband and my dogs, Brenna & Sasha