No Bones

A Plethora of Phronima

This post is part of a series associated with a recent trip by The Osborn lab and several colleagues to the Smithsonian Marine Station (SMS) in Florida, where they used the R/V Sunburst to investigate midwater animals from the Gulf Stream. 

At first glance, the fine mesh net that we pulled up from approximately 150 meters depth may have looked as if it didn’t hold much, but the bucket was teeming with transparent life.  I yelled with delight when I looked into our catch bucket and saw four tiny black dots (eye retinas) that belong to an almost entirely transparent animal – Phronima spp. – an alien looking, pelagic crustacean that is a member of a group known as the hyperiid amphipods.

A Phromina with deep red pigment on its claws and tail. Photo credit: Karen Osborn.

As you might imagine, finding a mostly transparent, tiny (less than an inch long) amphipod that lives in the open ocean is not an easy task.  I had been on the hunt for these clear creatures for over a year.  However, pulling a 4 mm mesh net through Gulf Stream waters off Fort Pierce aboard the Smithsonian Marine Station's 39' R/V Sunburst was like hitting the planktonic jackpot.  I was able to collect more than 50 specimens of the elusive Phronima from just a couple tows.  When I viewed a dish of these animals under the microscope, their glass-like appearance made it seem like I was looking through a crustacean kaleidoscope!

Many of our group in the Visiting Scientists Lab at SMS; Left to right: Stephanie Bush, Jamie Baldwin-Fergus, Laura Bagge, Jenna Moore, and William Browne. Photo credit: Karen Osborn.

The ocean is filled with amazingly clear animals, but we still don’t have a good understanding of how oceanic animals structure all the tissues that make their bodies transparent.  I am particularly fascinated by transparent crustaceans that have sturdy bodies and powerful muscles.  Phronima's transparency is an excellent form of camouflage, but transparent surfaces can become apparent due to reflections from downwelling sunlight or from the bioluminescent searchlights of predators.  My current research explores how these animals may be adapted to minimize such reflections. I will take these specimens back to Duke University, where I am currently a 4^th year PhD student in Sönke Johnsen’s lab, to examine these hyperiids, hoping they provide me with enough specimens to complete my study of transparency in Phronima.  

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me to have a successful and fun trip.  It was a pleasure to work with Woody and Hugh, who took us out on the Sunburst and made sure we had everything we needed for successful trawling operations.  Also, I’ve had a great time meeting other scientists here at the Smithsonian Marine Station, working with my dissertation committee member (Karen Osborn), and I hope to return in the future to continue looking for the invisible inhabitants of the open ocean!

by Laura Bagge, graduate student, Duke University

Finding a Crazy Unusual Version of a Common Thing

This post is part of a series associated with a recent trip by The Osborn lab and several colleagues to the Smithsonian Marine Station (SMS) in Florida, where they used the R/V Sunburst to investigate midwater animals from the Gulf Stream. 

What can be more fun than finding a crazy unusual version of a common thing!? In my opinion, nothing.

Copepods are among the most common crustaceans present in the ocean. These animals are ubiquitous in the plankton ecosystem, they eat phytoplankton and zooplankton smaller than themselves, and they serve as food for an enormous host of filter feeding organisms.  The vast majority are very simple in shape, with two long antennae, an oval shaped body, a single eye at the top of their head, and a short tail. There are a few highly unusual species that are parasites on fish and other invertebrates but for the most part copepods look a lot like the ones around the edge of Figure 1. Then, very rarely, there are wild looking species. These members of the Copepoda have incredible feathery frills sticking out of their bodies in various shades of red, orange and gold! Ernst Haeckel famously illustrated the image below of several notable copepod species the most prominent being Augaptilus filigerus (center) which possesses incredible flame colored filaments arranged around its otherwise ordinary body (Figure 1)!

Figure 1. Haeckel’s famous illustration of wildly beautiful copepods.

In the course of sampling the gulfstream off the coast of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Ft. Pierce on board the RV Sunburst, we found another wild-looking copepod (Figure 2)! Our tows with 200 and 500 micron plankton nets to depths of approx. 150 m returned an astounding diversity of organisms including Pteropods (sea butterflies), Hyperiid Amphipods with highly unusual eyes, larval mantis shrimp, flat snowflake-like phyllosoma larvae of lobsters, and hundreds of other incredible things! However, while sorting through theses myriad animals in the wet lab’s clear tubs with a flashlight and a spoon, a beautiful and strange shape caught the eye of Research Scientist and NMNH Curator Dr. Karen Osborn. Upon placing it in a separate dish for a closer look under a dissection microscope we saw an incredible animal.  It’s body was basically that of a typical copepod, although slightly more flattened, but it has an array of feathery projections arranged in concentric arcs completely surrounding its body and more than quadrupaling the surface area of the animal in a single plane! We were so impressed with the beauty of this animal that we immediately took a series of photos, one of which is bellow, to immortalize this awesome version of a very common creature. The photography was actually quite challenging as this particular copepod was extremely fast, folding its beautiful "feathers" hydrodynamically along its body and rocketing forward out of the field of view of the camera. A very exciting find indeed!

Figure 2. Strangely beautiful copepod collected during our tows in the Gulf Stream off Fort Pierce, FL. Photo Karen Osborn.

 

by Matthew Berning, SI intern. I am a recent graduate of Florida State University’s Biological Sciences program where I focused on Marine Invertebrate Zoology. I am currently in the midst of my second internship in the Invertebrate Zoology Department under Dr. Karen Osborn, this time sorting and cataloguing the Hydrothermal Vent Community collection. I am also continuing my independent research project, with Dr. Osborn, studying the diets of midwater isopods.

Exploring the Gulf Stream on a Beautiful Day

The Osborn lab and several of our colleagues met up at the Smithsonian Marine Station (SMS) recently to see what midwater animals we could catch in the Gulf Stream aboard the R/V Sunburst. This is the first of several posts by participants in the set of cruises.

The SMS is located in Fort Pierce, FL where the Gulf Stream, full of wonderful warm-water animals entrained in its screaming current, sweeps past just 20 miles off shore.  It takes just two hours to get out to this amazing river of warm water that travels through the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean to Great Britain and is rich with life.  We were hoping to catch hyperiid amphipods, giant acorn worm larvae, polychaetes, sea butterflies, and a bit of adventure.  We were not disappointed on any account.  

Osborn and Berning preparing to recover the 1.5 m midwater trawl net. Photo credit: William Browne,

Three of us headed out each morning at 7 am with Hugh Reichardt and Woody Lee, the caretakers of the 39' research vessel Sunburst.  By 9 we had dropped one of the nets in the water and anxiously awaited the results of the tow.  After a few tows we would head back to the lab with our 24 gallons of goodies to sort through.  Back at the lab the rest of our group and several SMS researchers would swarm the buckets as we unloaded them searching out their favorite animals and dipping them out into little dishes to take into the lab and examine with their microscopes.  

Drs Bush, Browne and Baldwin examining their animals in the lab. Photo credit: Matthew Berning,

 

We had a great group that included Osborn lab members:

- Jamie Baldwin Fergus, NMNH Buck Postdoctoral Fellow, who was looking for a variety of hyperiid amphipods to study their vision

- Jenna Moore, NMNH Buck Predoctoral Student and University of Florida Gainsville graduate student, who was hoping to find some chaetopterid larvae in order to examine how sedentary adult populations are connected.

- Matthew Berning - Intern and recent FSU graduate, working on feeding in munnopsid isopods

- myself, Research Zoologist and Curator of Annelida and Peracarida who was looking for tomopterids, hyperiids, acorn worm larvae, and anything that caught my interest (everything).  I look at the evolutionary relationships within these groups and study their morphology and behavior to better understand midwater communities diversity and function.

And collaborators:

- Stephanie Bush, Monterey Bay Aquarium Postdoctoral Researcher, who is studying genetic connectivity in the open ocean using pteropod molluscs or sea butterflies.

- Bill Browne, Assistant Professor, University of Miami, who kindly came to help Jamie and I get a handle on the diversity of the amazing and bizarre hyperiid amphipods.

- Laura Bagge, Graduate Student, Duke University, who studies transparent crustaceans 

 

by Karen J. Osborn

Unique Cirrate Octopod (aka Dumbo Octopod) Seen During 2014 Nautilus Expedition

Cirrate, or finned, octopods (which are also known as “dumbo” octopods because the fins on the sides of their bodies make them look like the flying elephant in the Disney cartoon) can be divided based on their behavior. One group spends a lot of time sitting on the bottom but sometimes gets up and swims by a combination of fin flapping and jellyfish-like pulses of the arms and web. Members of the other group seem to spend all of  their time up in the water and not on the bottom.

Recently, an interesting cirrate octopod was filmed as part of the 2014 Nautilus Expedition.

The one seen in this clip is in that second group. They spend much of their time drifting passively with the arms and web spread out like an umbrella. This is probably a feeding posture, although scientists don’t know much about the details of how they catch the small crustaceans on which they feed. When the arms are spread you can see the long, finger-like cirri, of which there is one pair for each sucker along the length of all arms. Their typical escape reaction is to swim slowly away by flapping their fins with arms trailing. They don’t jet away like most cephalopods do. The appearance of this one is unique in many ways.

by Michael Vecchione 

Halfway Point Achieved in Moving Dry Coral Collections -- More Volunteers Needed

Four months have passed since we started to move the dry coral collection from the third floor to the second floor (in the West Research Wing of the Natural History Building). The coral types are downstairs in total and all genera from A through N of the non-types have been moved while being rearranged alphabetically. We are now at approximately the halfway point. The floor space that was once occupied by the dry sponges and the first few rows of the coral collection are about to be given over to Botany.

Space that once held the dry sponges and the first few rows of the dry coral collection.

I am compiling a new squad of collection movers to replace those that worked hard over the summer and are now heading back to school.

Tim Coffer adorned with a lei of sponges. Who wouldn't want to work with this guy?

With any luck, we should have the second half of the coral collection rearranged and moved into the new cases downstairs by the end of 2014.

Tim Coffer in the new IZ dry collection space, which awaits the second half of the coral collection.

Volunteer Opportunity: Assisting with the move of the IZ dry collections.

by Tim Coffer

Hunting for Amnicolid Snails in the Pacific Northwest

I spent August 5-11 collecting amnicolid snails (Amnicola, Colligyrus) in northern Oregon and Washington for a taxonomic project funded by the Bureau of Land Management.   

My collaborator Hsiu-Ping Liu at a small spring containing Colligyrus.

Snails were collected from springs in the Mt. Hood area and in a series of small lakes. 

Hsiu-Ping Liu and USFS biologist Karen Honeycutt collecting Amnicola at Bonaparte Lake, northern Washington.

The collections will be studied by me and my collaborator Hsiu-Ping Liu to help resolve the taxonomy of these previously unstudied populations and to further investigate regional molluscan biogeography.

by Bob Hershler

What's Been Washing Up on the Shore Out West? Inspiration? [UPDATED: With new poem]

There are certain animals that just seem to capture the imagination. Take for instance the by-the-wind sailor, Velella velella.

Velella velella, which has been washing ashore along the US west coast over the past month. (Source: Wiki-Commons)

Dozens of news articles on this wonderful animal have been written and posted during the past month alone, as thousands of thousands (perhaps billions!) have washed up on the shores along nearly the entire west coast of the United States. Part of the media onslaught certainly results from the pure scale of the phenomonom, but one can't help but wonder if there isn't something special about this animal. 

Check out this great video by CNN featuring David Bader, director of education at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. Notice how he finishes up: "Maybe a few more marine biologists will be created because of this." Let's hope.

So, what is it about Velella velella that captures one's curiosity? Is it the oddness, the beauty?

Check out this fantastic video from the Plankton Chronicles. You'll learn that while the animal that washes up on the shore isn't a jellyfish, Velella velella IS a jellyfish during part of its life cycle. So the next time someone tells you that that Velella on the beach isn't a jellyfish, you can respond, "Well, right now it isn't."

Want to know even more about the amazing biology of Velella velella? Here is a very informative video from Cristina Gioia Di Camillo.

So, what makes Velella velella so special? Of course there are many answers, easily found within the videos above. But, perhaps one that is particularly important is its ability to inspire. In fact, it doesn't just inspire scientists, future scientists, videographers, and journalists, it also inspires poets. 

Here is one just written by my awesome summer intern, Mehr Kumar.

Velella Velella (it's a working title) 

Just as the men
raise up their sails
to the warm summer sun
velella velella does the same
fleets floating away
in the wind's puffs of breath
docking by the thousands
on the sandy coast
leading the way
for the old boatmen
who shift their rudders
in accordance with
the silent word
of the tiny sailors
who command the sea.

And here is the beginning of another. If you like the start, read the rest of this fun poem by Marchi Wierson.

"Say for example,
that you are a poet,
and you want
to write about
a particular type of
purple jellyfish
washing ashore
on the beaches of
the Pacific Northwest
of the United States
of America. "

by Allen G. Collins

Chad Walter receives Monoculus Award, highest honor from the World Association of Copepodologists

The Department of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) is proud to announce that museum specialist T. Chad Walter was recently presented the Monoculus Award by the World Association of Copepodologists (WAC), for his long-term dedication to copepodology. Chad’s many contributions to this field include maintaining the C. B. Wilson Copepod Library in IZ, developing and maintaining the online Smithsonian database “World of Copepods,” and his co-editorial role in maintaining the copepod section of the World Registry of Marine Species (WoRMS). Much of this work was performed as volunteer hours. Today, Chad continues to support copepodology by maintaining these websites, by recruiting new contributions to WoRMS, and by serving as treasurer. 

 

Plaque recognizing Chad’s Monoculus Award from the World Association of Copepodologists.

 

Recognition for thousands of hours of dedication to copepods

During the 11^th World Association of Copepodologists Conference in Seoul, South Korea, outgoing WAC President Rony Huys of the Department of Life Sciences at The Natural History Museum in London announced Chad as the triennial recipient of the Monoculus Award, recounting Chad’s extensive contributions to copepodology. Rony noted Chad’s dedication to the C. B. Wilson Library, beginning at a time when the library was maintained by a catalogue of 3x5 inch index cards.

In addition to maintaining the library by locating difficult-to-find publications, Chad helped migrate the library’s thousands of physical resources to electronic records. Today, Chad has ensured that the original index cards, which contain extensive and invaluable records, in some cases dating as far back as the 1800s, are publicly available in WoRMS, preserving an important section of historical records in copepodology. He also helps researchers from around the globe gain access to copepod publications that their home institutions do not have.

A (partial) example of a 3x4 inch index card set for Acartia from the original records in the C. B. Wilson Copepod Library. Digital forms of these index card sets are publicly available on the WoRMS database. In card 1 (upper left), the earliest recorded references date to the mid-1850s.

Grace Wyngaard from the Department of Biology at James Madison University, notes that the Monoculus Award is “the highest award one can receive from the society.” The Executive Committee nominated Chad for this award independently from several WAC members who also put his name forward, indicating how widespread the sentiment was for Chad to be honored. Although Chad was unable to attend the meeting in Seoul, Grace kindly brought back a wooden plaque detailing Chad’s contributions, a glass window hanging depicting drawings of body parts of Pseudodiaptomus, taken from Chad’s publications, a gift, and a gigantic card signed by WAC’s appreciative membership.

 

From two suitcases and six hundred dollars to a long-term career in IZ

Chad first arrived in IZ in July of 1982, after completing a four-year term in the Philippines as part of a Smithsonian-Peace Corps environmental research program. “I came to D.C. with two suit cases and six hundred dollars,” recalls Chad—who did not have a job offer when he moved here. He smiles as he adds, “and I never left.” When asked why he stayed, Chad states authoritatively, because “I knew I always wanted to work for the Smithsonian,” further noting that IZ contains “the biggest and best library in the world on copepods.”

While in the Philippines, Chad worked at the Marine Sciences Institute (MSI) of the University of the Philippines. Chad notes that even though his application to work for the Peace Corps in the Philippines seemed like a long shot, with his master’s in marine biology and a scuba diving certification, he exactly met the qualifications for the position.

During those four years, Chad helped develop the Institute’s research lab, designed research projects, conducted research, published papers, developed and taught a college-level marine biology course, and became fluent in Tagalog. Today, the MSI, a once-small program with a lofty vision, has grown into one of the tope marine science centers in southeast Asia, to which Chad helped lay the foundation in its early years.

Chad also put his scuba certification to good use, collecting thousands of copepods while working at the Institute. When Chad returned to the United States, he brought that collection with him to the Smithsonian, where it now resides. This collection formed the basis for Chad’s work on Pseudodiaptomus, on which he is the world authority.

 

Reflections of a long-time colleague and IZ volunteer

Chad is preceded in the Monoculus Award by long-time colleague Janet Reid, who volunteered side-by-side with Chad for 18 years in the C. B. Wilson Library. Janet identifies Chad as the impetus for constructing IZ’s online database of copepods, which formed the basis for the World of Copepods section of WoRMS. “Chad deserves about 90% of the credit for getting [the copepod references] computerized and online at the Smithsonian…It was a long haul,” says Janet, following up with, “this was really a prime contribution to the copepod community.”

For two decades, Janet and Chad poured countless hours of volunteer time into building up the library and digitizing its records. In reference to her colleague, Janet says, “he is one of the most straightforward people I’ve ever dealt with…I’ve always enjoyed working with him very much…He’s really one of the most dedicated people I know.”

 

It all comes down to passion

For all of his work with copepods, Chad still favors the calanoid genus Pseudodiaptomus. In many parts of the world, calanoids dominate the plankton, contribute majorly to nutrient cycling, and typically serve as the second most important food source for marine mammals, especially juveniles. Every body of water, Chad explains, “from high mountain lakes and streams to the deepest trench in the ocean” usually contains some form of copepod. In fact, copepods can even be found in the trapped water of bromeliads, high up in the canopies of trees.

Calanoida copepods from the Gulf of St. Lawrence – Chad’s favorite type of copepod. Chad approved the identification in this image submission as part of his co-editorial position for WoRMS. (Credit: Roberta Miller)

Gesturing to a tray of small, dehydrated starfish, Chad notes that while his “8 hours” a day are directed toward collection management, the tiny copepod will always be his big passion. “I just love copepods,” he states in a matter-of-fact tone, “and I like to provide information to people. It’s my way of contributing to copepodology.” And clearly, Chad’s colleagues in the World Association of Copepodologists appreciate just how extensive those contributions have been.

by Liz Boatman

Undergraduates Present Summer Research in Invertebrate Zoology

Two weeks ago, the National Museum of Natural History held a special poster session for its summer Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) students. Megan Moore and Allison Snider, two of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ)’s own REU students, presented. Moore was mentored by research zoologist Jon Norenburg and support scientist Herman Wirshing, and Snider, by Nancy Knowlton (Sant Chair for Marine Science) and postdoctoral fellow Matthieu Leray. The session was well attended by folks throughout the museum, including many of the students’ mentors and other staff.

Allison (left) and Megan (right) stand by their posters. This year, the REU program included a seminar on scientific poster design. Clearly, they both paid attention!

 

Barcoding and metabarcoding the cryptofauna of the Northern Red Sea

This summer, Allison joined an international team of invertebrate researchers studying the biodiversity of the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan. Not only is this region understudied, says Allison, but also the small invertebrates living there. Hence, Allison’s project was specifically focused on two size classes of invertebrates, organisms ranging from 500 micron to 2 mm in size and organisms greater than 2 mm.

To gain a better understanding of the biodiversity in this region, the team placed autonomous reef monitoring system (ARMS) units in the gulf. The ARMS units were recovered at a later date, and the organisms adhering to their surfaces were removed for study. While standard DNA barcoding techniques could be used for the “large” organisms (2 mm and above), Allison used metabarcoding for the smaller class, which means that the different types of organisms were not separated from each other but were batch processed.

As a result of this project, Allison not only learned about biodiversity issues but also developed a solid understanding of the DNA barcoding process, which entails the techniques of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the DNA sequence of interest and DNA sequence alignment using BLAST and other databases. 

For Allison, of course, the experience was also important on many other levels. She says that her time in IZ was “Amazing. It’s been absolutely incredible…I learned a lot and met a lot of really great people in the lab.”

“I've always loved museums, so to come here [the Smithsonian Institution] was better than I ever could have imagined,” she related, beaming. Allison is a rising senior at Central Michigan University, majoring in the natural resources track of the biology program. Allison looks forward to applying to graduate school programs.

 

Illuminating the evolutionary history of a group of miniaturized worms, the Nemertean genus Ototyphlonemertes

Ototyphlonemertes. Worm is about 0.15 mm thick. The worms use an eversible proboscis with a dagger-like stylet and neurotoxins to capture other small worms and crustaceans.

When asked about her experience in IZ, REU student Megan Moore expressed a similar sentiment as Allison, stating that “I had a lot of fun doing this project, meeting new people - just being at the Smithsonian is a really rewarding experience. Seeing the collections has been really great.”

Megan spent her summer working on Jon Norenburg’s project to discover the evolutionary history of the genus Ototyphlonemertes as a means to understanding its morphological characters. Support scientist Herman Wirshing, whom we have previously featured in No Bones for his excellent work in the Smithsonian Laboratories of Analytical Biology (a.k.a., The LAB), provided a lot of Megan’s lab training. “Working with her was very easy, pleasant. She picked up things right away and was a good listener. She was very self-directed,” says Herman.

For the project, Megan studied tiny nemertean worms, which are small enough to glide unimpeded through the aqueous pore space of coarse sand beaches. Because of their small size (about the thickness of a hair) and general lack of any mineralized structure, nemertean worms are unrepresented in the fossil record. The specific worms that Megan studied were recovered at an earlier date by Jon from Puerto Rico and French Polynesia, though no Ototyphlonemertes were previously known from these regions. There are 26 named species in the genus, and for this project, the team looked at worms that closely resembled 6 of these already known species.

The work revealed several interesting findings, such as examples of cryptic speciation (the DNA data suggests that morphologically similar worms actually are distinct species), sympatric cryptic species (morphologically indistinguishable species that live together), and allopatric cryptic species (living in different sites). These findings are very interesting news, because they suggest that there are (possibly many!) more species of Nemertea than can be recognized from anatomy alone. In the future, says Megan, obtaining more samples of these nemerteans will strengthen their cladistic and biogeographic analyses, which will illuminate the evolution and distribution of these worms. Additionally, she notes that working with such small, carnivorous organisms poses a significant challenge, because not only are they sampling the nemertean organism’s DNA when they process a specimen but also any other worm or crustacean prey contained in its gut.

Beach at Rincon, Puerto Rico. A typical coarse-sand, high-energy beach favored by Ototyphlonemertes.

Like Allison, Megan is a rising senior. This coming year she expects to finish her bachelor’s in forestry and agriculture at the University of Maine in Orono. Then, before applying to graduate school, she plans to take a few years to gain more experience in the research environment, to better direct her future career choice. That said, right now Megan is very excited about staying in marine ecology and would like to find a way to tie that field in with experience working with tribal communities.

 

Why the REU experience is so important

The REU program is specifically aimed at providing research opportunities to undergraduate students who might not otherwise have them, such as students at liberal arts schools and other non-research institutions. The National Science Foundation funds REU sites at 650 locations throughout the United States, making the REU program the most extensive undergraduate-focused research program in the country.

According to IZ department chair Jon Norenburg, REUs are particularly important opportunities for undergraduates who are thinking about pursuing graduate school, allowing them to “experience a research internship to give them real-world exposure to the many facets of a research program.” Jon likens REUs to learning “how the sausage is made,” because they give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the research process and “test their aptitude for participating in it.”

Herman says that although this was his first time mentoring an undergraduate in IZ, he enjoyed the experience and would gladly participate in such a role again. Generally, he notes, “[undergraduates] are very enthusiastic. They're very easy to work with because they want to learn,” also relating that “it's a good opportunity for us as researchers to get in their minds, to be able to take the concepts back to those early stages and figure out how to break them down” to become better at relating difficult ideas to those less familiar.

The REU program is important to IZ in particular “because many aspects of invertebrate natural history are grossly understudied and many of us hope that at least some of our interns will go on to productive careers as colleagues,” says Jon. “However, regardless of an intern’s career interests, working with an intern is almost always rewarding,” he continues. “It’s good to feel that you are sending [your student intern] off into the world at least a little better equipped for their future than when they arrived.”

 

Interested in a summer research internship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History? Learn more here.

The NMNH REU site is funded by National Science Foundation award #1062692 through the Division of Earth Sciences in the Directorate for Geosciences.

by Liz Boatman

Obituary of Longtime IZ Associate, Donn Lloyd Tippett -- Curiosity and Passion Makes Science

 

Donn Tippett, circa 1980. Photograph courtesy Kathy Tippett.

What makes science happen? Well, no doubt science is a dynamic and complex process, just check out the Science Flowchart. But no one will argue with the assertion that curiosity plays a crucial role in science, particularly the inception of a particular scientific endeavor. I once heard James Cameron say that "Science is curiosity acted upon" and while simple, it seems accurate.

Let us consider Donn Lloyd Tippett, who was a longtime volunteer with IZ, and expert systematist of gastropod snails in the family Turridae. Donn died this past January. 

Donn was a professional psychiatrist and an amateur mallacologist whose work ethic and passion for gastropods led him to become an accomplished systematist of turrid snails. After his death, Alan R. Kabat wrote a wonderful and informative obituary, focusing on his malacological accomplishments, that was published in the American Conchologist, publication of the Conchologists of America.

It is always great to read about the events that spark someone's curiosity, which subsequently becomes a productive passion. How apt is Cameron's assertion that science is curiosity acted upon? Here are the words of Don Tippett, on his own scientific inspiration. 

"Sea shells were a source of little familiarity or knowledge to me prior to the summer of 1967 or 1968, at which time I was in a “touristy” store in Bethany Beach. There, accompanying a friend looking for a gift, I came across the standard display of shells, laid out to show the shapes, colors and sizes of these objects. At once, taken by them, I had to have something of this fascinating conglomeration of nature’s wares. “Something” grew to about $100.00 worth, which included only a beginning of the profuse varieties available. The clerk, a seasoned student and dealer, explained much about them in the course of capturing my fancy. A beginner’s book accompanied the shells, and this provided study and a beginning to the field of what I soon learned is the field of Malacology.

Before long I received a copy of Tucker Abbott’s first edition of American Seashells. I was now hooked for sure. With this I began a program of collecting. How naïve it was, I learned later, to think I could collect a specimen of every shell. So my original plan to collect shells world-wide was gradually reduced to collecting just Atlantic shells, and then to just collecting Western Atlantic shells, then to Caribbean shells, and then to collecting only shells known as gastropods. From there I gradually began to specialize in collecting only the family Turridae – but I did begin to collect them world-wide bringing me full circle. Naturally, I had to make the transition from common names to learning the scientific names plus the classification and taxonomy involved. From a short-term intensive hobby that captured my attention and took time and money it gradually evolved into a long term, serious, and, life-long labor."

by Allen G. Collins