Aquatic Fungi Down in a Slot Canyon

I just learned that the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is having its annual meeting in L.A. Its my hope that the visiting academia and professionals from around the world take a chance to explore the unique, rare, and persistent biota still extant or recently extirpated in the southland.

A couple weeks ago I was down in a slot canyon- the north fork of Matillija Creek- off highway 33 past Ojai in Ventura county. Now I have always had a strong fascination and draw towards riparian/waterside habitats. Growing up in semi-arid southern California has taught me that if you follow the water- you follow the animals. Like an artery flowing through the land the creek attracts the attention of animals and bipedal hominids. And such is the crux of the dilemma facing the threatened riparian flora and fauna of the California southland; water is rare and sought after by all here.

North Fork Matillija Creek. Duane Nash

Perhaps the most emblematic creature representing this push/pull of water usage in the southern California is a salmonoid, the southern steelhead- Oncoryhncus mykiss. Living in an environment many would not expect to find such a fish in- southern steelhead can endure the highest temperatures, lowest flows, and overall roughest conditions of all steelhead populations. They seem to appear and disappear with the rare high flow events, sometimes disappearing from a watershed for years at a time and reappearing during especially wet years- El Nino events. Sometimes the adults oversummer in the deepest, coolest pools if flows are not sufficient to return to the ocean. The southern distinct population segment is perhaps the oldest steelhead genetically and shows the most promise for repopulating/colonizing watersheds in a warming world. Steelhead are ocean ran rainbow trout. Even if all adult steelhead are extirpated from a watershed as long as native rainbow trout survive in the headwaters they can still produce ocean going fry. Southern steelhead are also unique in that they can return to spawn for several years, and they can colonize and explore non-natal streams.

Southern Steelhead. San Juan Creek. San Diego Co. Link

So when I approach a pool like the one above I always approach ninja style in the hope that I might spy an adult steelhead holing up for the summer in it. Alas I saw no 30" steelies in the creek- the odds are against me as they number about 500- but when I lifted a waterlogged piece of wood a unique looking guy that gets altogether no love appeared: aquatic fungi.

Now I am fairly recent to the world of aquatic fungi- but so are most. When wood and leafy material falls into the water fungi play a role in decomposing it. In addition the fungi themselves are grazed by invertebrates forming an important link in freshwater ecosystems that has only recently been given due credence. When researchers looked at the protein levels of leaf litter in a stream they were surprised to notice protein levels increase over time. The protein in the decaying leaves was actually from the fungal hyphae colonizing the leaves. And it is the fungi itself, not the leaf- which is a sought after nutrient for invertebrates at the base of the food chain. What type ol fungi is it? I have no idea- the study of fungi and especially aquatic fungi is woefully inadequate. Maybe someone reading this can let me know.

I also saw an aquatic theropod which flew down into a pool next to me allowing me to photo it- a hooded merganser I believe.

Cheers!!!

Mud Bugs

Following in the theme of my last post I want to talk about another crustacean detritivore that has some unusual adaptations- burrowing crayfish.

Now most are familiar with crayfish, crawdads, mud bugs, yabbies- whatever name they go by in your neck of the woods. They are decapods (hence the resemblance to lobsters) ubiquitous to freshwater habitats throughout the world. Composed of three families, Parastacidae, Cambaridae, and Astacidae. The distribution of Camabaridae and Astacidae is suggestive of Laurasian origin while Parastacidae family is thought to be of Gondwanan stock. Interestingly crayfish are not native to Africa but are found in Madagascar. The southeastern US (330 species family Cambaridae) and the Australasian (100 species family Parastacidae) regions are hotspots for crayfish biodiversity. Unfortunately native crayfish species in many areas are being displaced by invasive species due to both the pet trade, escaped bait, and general ecological misuse. The most commonly indicted culprit is the Louisiana Red Swamp crayfish- Precambarus clarkii- a robust aggressive species that burrows into banks, eats anything, and can even survive brackish waters which is unusual for a crayfish.

Louisiana Crawfish

Other notable invasive species include the Rusty crayfish

(Orconectus rusticus), and the Signal Crayfish (Pacifasticus leniusculus)- the latter of which is most notable for ravaging native crawfish stocks in Europe and gets a cameo in a torture scene in the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla. Both Louisiana and Signal crayfish spread crayfish plague and not to mention crayfish in general may serve as hosts for the chytrid fungus that is devastating amphibians worldwide.

Although pesky American crayfish are causing some unwanted ecological affects in freshwater ecosystems through out the world it is worth noting some of the more unique and often rare extant crayfish- while we still have them around. The largest crayfish, indeed the largest freshwater invertebrate in the world, is by far the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish (Astacopsis gouldi)  

Tasmanian Giant Crayfish

It feeds primarily on rotten logs although there is debate over whether it is seeking the wood itself as a nutrient or the inverts, bacteria, and fungi on the wood ( I suspect the latter). Another notable Australasian crayfish is the prickly looking Murrary crayfish, the second largest crawdaddy in the world. Its rugged design is perhaps due to it being the chief prey of the large Murray cod.

Below is a nice photoshop and then a real pic giving its size and cool spikes.

Nice photoshop of a Murray

Better scale here of a Murray

Again, like the Tasmanian giant, the Murray is understood to eat primarily dead and decaying vegetable  matter. But is it gaining nutrient from the plant itself- of which its proteins are denatured and generally not a good food- or is it actually targeting the bacteria, fungi, and inverts on the plant as a more complete food? This notion that many detritivores are actually subsisting on and targeting the decomposers which live on the susbstrate "food" in question is a recurring theme here and one we will return to later...

But back to the subject at hand which is not giant cryptic crayfish but burrowing crayfish. For our purposes here let us distinguish the types of burrows crayfish utilize. Now many crayfish will burrow into the creek bed and bank, and some will burrow to escape drought in seasonal water courses- but they type I want to talk about in this post are crayfish that do not live in a streams, rivers, ponds or lakes- ephemeral or otherwise. These crayfish actually live on wholly terrestrial environments where they burrow down to actually reach the water table but are not dependent on bodies of water at all. Burrowing crayfish of the type we are talking about here occur in both the northern and southern hemisphere, suggesting it is a successful lifestyle as it has evolved independently in disparate lineages of crayfish.

You rarely see a burrowing crayfish as it only ventures out in especially humid/rainy conditions. But what does give away the presence of burrowing crayfish is the distinctive "chimney"

at the top of their burrow. It is not well understood why this chimney is formed but it has been proposed that it serves a function of humidity control and may be plugged up in especially dry conditions. Burrowing crayfish are indicative of high water tables and the crayfish may burrow several meters to reach them. Morphologically burrowing crayfish look fairly similar to typical water dwelling crayfish but they may have slightly reduced tails due to lack of swimming and fairly robust claws for burrowing purposes. Lifestyle questions abound for burrowing crayfish. I found little resources concerning their diet, reproduction, and possible social interaction. One of the most well studied is the Tasmanian burrowing crayfish- which actually refers to about 15 species in the genus Engaeus. They do not exceed 10 cm in length, have forward pointing pincers for maneuverability, and very reduced tails as seen in the pics below. They are thought to subsist on organic material in the soil as well as occasional prey they stumble upon (worms, bugs).

Engaeus. Doran & Richards 1996.

Despite the paucity of information regarding burrowing crayfish there is a well recorded paleontological history of this lifestyle. Stephen Hasiotis of the University of Kansas has done extensive work on crayfish evolutionary history with both trace and actual fossils dating back to the Triassic. His work in the Chinle formation Utah has revealed a surprising diversity of crayfish forms and lifestyles from aquatic to terrestrial. This has pushed back the evolutionary origin of crayfish from the Cretaceous into the Triassic or even Permian and has also raised the question that crayfish are not freshwater lobsters- but lobsters are actually saltwater crayfish!!!

(c) Anthony Martin. Australia E. Cret Crayfish burrow

Cheers!!!

Pertinencia

Crayfish Fossils and Burrows from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, Canyonland National Park Utah

How Did Freshwater Crayfish Get on a Barrier Island?

Tasmanias Burrowing Crayfish

Paleo-Myth Number 5: Cenozoic: The Age of Mammals?

Speak of the Cenozoic (New Life) and you implicitly speak of what is commonly referred to as "the Age of Mammals". Although mammals were around during the Mesozoic and were very diverse in small size guilds- its only in the Mesozoic do we see them expand into large and dominant carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. We also see expansion into the marine realm and a certain aberrant, bipedal ape became especially dominant and widespread during the Holocene. Certainly when one looks across the breadth of mammalian diversity one is astounded by the myriad forms: from shrew to bat to giraffe to beaked whale they are all mammals.

And this post is not discounting the obvious success mammals have sustained during this time period. But what it is addressing is how this notion- how the Cenozoic became synonymous with "The Age of Mammals"- has distorted our view of the relative ecological importance of other vertebrates during this time period- namely birds.

Now some of you reading this might be well aware that the Cenozoic always represented a significant expansion of Aves and especially Neognathene passerines- this post and the Paleo-Myth series is not necessarily aimed at you but at those perhaps less conscious of the importance of birds in the Cenozoic.

Chances are wherever you are at on the planet right now as you read this, if you step outside and just start counting species you will see more of and greater diversity of birds than mammals.

Consider this:

Most estimates place the number of extant bird species at about 10,000. Mammals? roughly half the number of species as birds at about 5,500 species. And of the mammal species alive the vast majority are rodents, bats, and shrews (red, blue, and yellow in the graph below).

So basically about 75% of all mammals can be characterized as being small, primarily nocturnal, and insectivorous/omnivorous- they basically have not changed a bunch from the Mesozoic. And if you look at the largest order Rodentia it comprises a little less than 2,500 species- or roughly half the amount of species that compromise Passerines at roughly 5,000. This comparison is especially telling as rodents and passerines do share a lot in terms of ecological overlap. And this diversity among birds is not slowing down, if anything it is picking up!

Looking at species diversity offers us one perspective on the bird vs mammal question. It should be noted that the peculiar adaptations and specializations of many birds might have a way of inflating bird species counts compared to mammals. Also because birds can be quite mobile they are able to fly off to different areas and speciate- unlike rodents. But the sheer number of bird species, compared to mammals, can not be ignored.

But lets look at biomass, as this may offer another perspective on the issue.

Tsavo. (c) Antero Topp. The most abundant bird, red-billed Quelea, vs largest land mammal, African Elephant

Now biomass estimates are tenuous at best and it is hard to estimate the population of even people- but lets look at the most common bird in the world- Africas Red-Billed Quelea (Quelea quelea). Estimates for the population range from 3 billion to up to 10 billion- pretty respectable numbers. But here the mammals probably have the birds beat. Most experts believe the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) to be the only land based vertebrate to come close to humans in terms of biomass. Some estimate New York City alone to have a population of rats at up to 100 million! Ok so mammals hold the #1 and #2 spot for terrestrial vertebrate biomass- who come in at #3? a bird, the common chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus).

Another point to be made with the rodent question is that birds of prey- owls, falcons, hawks- and also birds like corvids, herons, gulls, and shrikes are the most important predatory control on exponential rodent growth in many habitats. And, unlike mammal predators, can converge from long distance to exploit areas with rodent plagues. They thus serve as a last line of defense for rodent scourges. Another point for the birds.

Another avenue to explore in regards to the bird/mammal debate is extent of ecological niches. Both extant and extinct forms of birds show that they have made significant ecological inroads into niches of large terrestrial herbivore and carnivore traditionally occupied by mammals. Examples include modern flightless birds (ostriches, rheas etc) and in the past phorusrhachids, moas, and elephant birds. But mammals have not yet exploited many niches that are the exclusive domain of birds. There are no soaring mammals that scavenge carcasses (vultures, condors etc). There are no mammals that exploit shores/intertidal zones to the extent the myriad waders, shorebirds etc do. There are no filter feeding freshwater or brackish water mammals like ducks, flamingoes, anseriformes etc. Birds show a much greater diversity in their insectivorous forms than mammals. Although bats are important pollinators, seed dispersal agents in some areas they are less successful/diverse than the myriad birds that perform these same functions. And there are no bats that exploit marine resources, unlike the myriad diversity of marine birds.

In short birds can often do the same tasks that mammals do when given a chance- but mammals do not seem to succeed in the areas where birds do exceptionally well.

The Cenozoic: The Age of Mammals and Birds

(c) Flip Nicklin

Pertinencia

Along with Humans, Who Else is in the 7 Billion Club?

Global Diversity of Birds in Space and Time

Influence of Predation on Rodent Population

To Go Where No Crustacean Has Gone Before

I want to talk about a particularly interesting little critter I stumbled upon while doing some research on detritivores. Since this guys's story was new to me perhaps it is new to you.

Hemilepistus reaumuri. wikipedia

Ok, so a freakin' pillbug (aka woodlouse) what is so special about them? Yes we are all familiar with pillbugs, rolly-pollies, sow-bug whatever name you know them by they are found or introduced all over the world- usually in dark/damp places and feed mainly on dead vegetation. They are crustaceans,  Isopods, and represent the most successful radiation of terrestrial crustaceans- the suborder Oniscidea. Now that is all fine and dandy- but what I want to talk about is the guy pictured above- Hemilepistus reaumuri- which "inhabits the driest habitat conquered by any species of crustacean".

Now I grew up in southern California and these guys were definitely part of my childhood urban fauna growing up. The crustacean in question most certainly is Armadillidium vulgare native to Europe including the British Isles. It thrives in coastal areas, especially with calcareous soils- so it does alright here. Despite being invasive it is considered relatively benign on the ecology, unlike the situation of our crayfish in British waters. In addition to  A. vulgare, southern California also hosts at least two sowbugs (the ones that can't roll up); the European woodlouse Oniscus asellus; and the rough woodlouse, Porcellio scaber. Both require somewhat wetter

conditions than the rollies to respire. In the pic to the left you can see the difference between the two with European woodlouse having the colored specks while the rough woodlouse is more textured. Interestingly these isopods are doing so well in the irrigated sections of California that their European native predator- the woodlouse Spider Dysdera crocata- came along too and is doing just fine here eating 100% sowbug al dente which it pierces their exoskeleton with those big ol' fangs it has. And its a good thing that spider is around to eat 'em as many spiders find them distasteful as they excrete ammonia gas and have blue blood due to the copper based blood- haemocycanin- that they utilize. Anyways, despite their familiarity as urban landscape critters they are quite interesting

and worthy of admiration. That being said the isopod at question, Hemilepistus reaumuri, departs from these other guys both in respect to the harsher environment that it thrives in and the sociality that this species has evolved.

Native to steppes, semideserts, salt lake shores and real deserts of North Africa and the Mediterranean this isopod not only survives but thrives in an extreme environment. Central to its success is its habit of burrowing. New burrows are only made in early spring by a single woodlouse which guards the entrance assiduously against other conspecifics. Only after a prolonged courtship does the desert woodlouse accept a member of the opposite sex. Once bonded the crustaceans form an alliance that is about as magnanimous as any in the animal kingdom. They both guard the entrance to the burrow, taking turns for foraging as needed, and reject intruders. Partners are recognized based on scent. When the female gives birth (woodlouse eggs hatch on the underside of their body so they appear to "give birth") to 50-100 young they actually stay and hang around for quite some time being fed by the parents. All the offspring develop a specific "scent badge" which allows the parents to identify them as kin and reject (or even consume) the young of other woodlouse. In this way only the offspring of the monogamously mated pair actually benefit from the refuge of the burrow in an environment that would otherwise fatally desiccate these crustaceans. The parents, in addition to their offspring, form a sort of colony and individuals will embark on provisioning trips for food which is brought back to the burrow. Over time a faecal embankment builds up around the colony which demarcates the extent of their territory. The pair only raise one brood and an individual only lives about 15 months max.

So what we have here is an isopod, a crustacean, that is dependent on some moisture to keep its tracheal lungs operating- living at the extreme edge of its ability and adapting to this environment with an advanced sociability, burrow construction, food provisioning, pair bonding, and child rearing. Cool. Oh yeah, it is also very successful at this lifestyle and biomass studies indicate it is often the most abundant critter in its environment- supporting a myriad of predators including being the primary prey for a species of scorpion, Scorpio maurus.

Negev Desert, natural habitat for desert woodlouse. 

Of course such an interesting juxtaposition of an intensely social crustacean setting up shop in the desert has stimulated much scientific conjecture. Do harsh environments encourage parental care strategies? How might such a system have evolved? Does this provide a model for how other social invertebrates (social insects) may have evolved their life strategies?

Anyways, pill-bugs rule.
Peace.

Pertinencia

K. Eduard Linsenmair (1974). "Some adaptations of the desert woodlouse Hemilepistus reaumuri (Isopoda, Oniscoidea) to desert environment" (PDF). Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Ökologie 4: 183–185. http://www.opus-bayern.de/uni-wuerzburg/volltexte/2010/4448/pdf/Linsenmair_adaption_woodlouse.pdf.

The CaRE OF WOODLICE

Jurassic Burglar Alarm Final Edition

So I've been working on a picture for a couple of weeks now in color pencil. And since I've been staring at it so much while working on it I have grown kind of sick of it. Anyways there are some things I like about it, some things I am not so happy with....

"Jurassic Burglar Alarm" Duane Nash. 2013

Of course what grabs your attention is the saurian carnage- and that is no mistake- and if you want to read about why the fleeing toddler sauropod is mauled and why that Torvo is ripping some huevos out of the Allosaurus- read my post here. On the heels of the recent "All Yesterdays" backlash maybe I should preface everything with a "highly speculative" label.

Anyways I don't want to talk too much about the beasties depicted, although I should mention that I got inspiration for the Allo from the Perentie monitor of Australia, but what I do want to talk about is my

my choices for the vegetation. As I outlined in one of my earliest posts (Mesozoic Big Three) conifers, cycads, and ferns, although doubtless important during the Mesozoic, are over represented in depictions of Mesozoic vegetation in my opinion. Artists will often choice from a palette of pines, auracarians, generic cycads, tree ferns and run of the mill groundcover ferns. That being said I consciously went for vegetation of a slightly different bent. And although I do use conifers, cycads, and ferns in this pic I did try to portray them in slightly untypical styles. Also I tried to add color to the landscape. It is a common sentiment that the Mesozoic vegetation was colorless due to the lack of flowering plants and this attitude prevails in much of the art depicting this period. But if you look at the full panoply of plants which may have existed in these habits there is actually much option for color; the strange cones of cycads; weird hues in the wood of conifers; sporangia on ferns and horsetails; the weird pseudo-flowers of gnetales and seed ferns- perhaps even colorful enough to attract insect pollinators- you have a lot of color to choose from. And also keep in mind that even in angiosperm dominated landscapes you don't necessarily see a riot of color everywhere you look- think about savanna grasslands or tropical jungles- you mainly see hues of green, browns, and tans.

I picture the environment depicted here as part of the upper reaches of the Morrison formation-perhaps alluvial fans emanating form the Eastern mountains, Late Jurassic North America. It is a semi-arid area, but recent showers have greened up the landscape. In texture and mode it feels like chapparal, or scrubby savanna. The ground has a reddish, oxidized hue to it.

The knarly twisted juniper-looking conifers is a hypothetical cheirolepidiacean conifer and they dominate the landscape. The groundcover is a mix of putative types- I draw them in discrete bunches implying a type of slow motion war between the plants as they clamber for space, sun, and water.

The Baby Blue Bronto is in a patch of Ephedra like plants. Ephedra is a
type of gnetale and I invoke them here as a quite successful plant of arid conditions-as they are today. We do have good evidence for members
of the Gnetophyta in the early Cretaceous- perhaps there were ghost lineages going back further? The plants behind the Bronto and underneath the Torvo are putative whisk ferns. Whisk ferns, although allied with ferns, are another  botanical anomaly- we don't really know much about where they came from or their fossil record. They lack true roots but instead rely on mycorrhizal fungi. They spread with rhizoidal structures and lack true leaves but have chlorophyl in their stems. Today they are found widely scattered around the globe, suggesting perhaps a more widespread distribution in the past. The cycads in the foreground I depicted with their trunks underground, forming underground stems like a few extant cycads (Bowenia, Strangeria). I drew both male/female varieties and gave them some

Whisk Fern. Psilotum nudum

color as well. Maybe they released weird toxins into the soil to inhibit other plants. Little spreading ferns exist in the north side of the conifers and spread little runners during the wet season. The dense, mat forming vegetation under the Allosaur is a clump of putative lycopsids. Like the Resurrection plant they go dormant during the dry and spring to life rapidly with the returns of the rains. Here I depict them forming almost a grass like thatch of growth, spreading indefinitely via rhizomes, cropped back by hungry dinos.

You will also notice that I gave some hue & color to the soil itself. This is to imply a sort of biological soil crust, common today in arid regions, composed of a diverse community of moss, lichens, fungi, cyanobacteria that I suggest were common in appropriate environments during the Mesozoic. Perhaps even some dinos regularly nibbled these crusts?

Today soil crusts suffer from trampling and take many years, sometimes centuries to recover. Perhaps a community of crusts, ideally adapted to the large- but spreading- feet of many dinos existed forming a unique aspect to Mesozoic ecosystems?

And finally to the right you can see a large, amorphous, ctulhu looking clump of vegetation in my pic. That is another putative gnetophyte- this time based off the strange Welwitschia of the Namib desert.

This guy grows only two leaves- but they just keep growing- and have weird reproductive propagules.

Anyways what I hoped to do with this piece is get your attention with the dino carnage but really draw you in to the vegetation/environment as well. Just as there is a fossil bias for verteberates, there is a fossil bias for plants as well. There are just so many facets of the past we may never know. However I do not think we should get too conservative in construing possibilities just because the evidence is not ideal.

Cheers!!

Welwitschia mirabilis. Rob Nicholls (C)

Planet Detritus

All right first things first, sorry it has got a little slow around here- we are not going anywhere. This is first and foremost a creative venture- and if I am not feeling it I am not going to force it. Secondly if the this blog ever gets feeling too much like a job, well what's the point really, especially since I am not getting paid for this...

That being said the lack of recent writing activity does not imply a lack of ideas for posts bouncing around in my head so hopefully the writing and posting will pick up accordingly...but you know how that goes...

My post today is about all things decayed and rotten- and those that relish this diet. As usual I will get to the issues of all things rotten in the Mesozoic and do some unabashedly reckless speculation on what all that may mean for the ecology of such times.

Clavaria zollingeri, wiki, a decomposer

Let's start with this basic distinction: decomposers break down and digest detritus externally- think bacteria, fungi; while detritivores actually ingest detritus internally- stuff like earthworms, pill-bugs, and millipedes. But in most discussions detritivores/decomposers are used interchangeably. For our purposers here it useful to think of detritivores as animals and decomposers as other (bacteria, fungi etc). Keep in mind that detritivores need not be full time trash men, such as the baboon in the pic below eating elephant dung. It is also useful to recognize that detritivores are often not targeting the detritus itself as a source of nutrition- but the microorganisms, fungi, and critters in it.

Baboon eating elephant dung, acting as a detritivore. Creative Commons.

Now let's look at some really rough estimates given on wikipedia for the biomass estimates for certain organisms.  Again these numbers do imply a certain amount of subjectivity and they are from wiki- but the point here is to illustrate the importance of detritus and the organisms that subsist on it- simply as a reflection of the biomass they represent here on earth- and presumably in the past. It is currently estimated that bacteria and plants are roughly equal in biomass, and some even estimate bacteria biomass exceeds plant and animal biomass combined. Keep in mind that not all bacteria is saprotrophic and many species photosynthesize or are chemotrophs. Fungi may account for up to 25% of total biomass on earth amazingly- again not all fungi subsist on rotten stuff, many species are parasitic.

Oceanic and terrestrial habitats differ markedly in how plants are used, In the oceans nearly all the plant biomass occurs as phytoplankton and nearly all of it is consumed. This pattern results in a characteristic inverted food pyramid in which consumer biomass actually outweighs producer biomass. The animals outweigh the plants! This is achieved via the high rate of turnover and reproductive capacity of marine phytoplankton. Never the less detritus is still important in oceanic food chains, most important of all the "marine snow" of deep ocean basins.

Marine Snow

Now contrast the situation in the ocean with what is going on in terrestrial ecosystems where only a paltry 18% of plant biomass actually goes to terrestrial herbivores. This is primarily a function of the difficulty in breaking down the complex carbohydrates of land plants as opposed to simple, unicellular marine plants. Yup as much as we like to carry on about "plant predators" here at da' salad and how they shape ecosytems- in any given terrestrial habitat the vast majority of plant material is not even going to herbivores. So who picks up the slack? Decomposers/detritivores get the lions share of plant biomass, albeit in a somewhat degraded form, in terrestrial ecosystems.

Zootermopsis warrior termite

And there is my short but sweet intro for all things rotten- hopefully you can see that detrital food chains, especiallly terrestrial, can not be ignored. And many of the points I illustrated here will be useful for upcoming posts....

Cheers!

"Jurassic Burglar Alarm" continued

So I have some updated pics from my "Jurassic Burglar Alarm" pic I am working on. Although I consider my art a little rough around the edges I get a lot from drawing- it opens up parts of the brain and relaxes you in a way that other activities can not- and I will continue to draw in my less than precise self described "punk rock style" of quick and to the point. Besides my pic tells a story and I don't think its a bad one.

As you can see my baby blue bronto has recently suffered an attack of some sort and is obviously recently mauled. But who did the mauling? And whose big purple tail is that? Is that the tail of the attacker?

So that purple tail actually belongs to a pretty large theropod. If you can imagine the blue bronto being the size of a water buffalo this theropod is white rhino size. And it has some other theropod (still in sketched form) pinned down. Who is that? Its Allosaurus clearly getting the worst of it from the larger theropod- which is actually a Torvosaurus. And the poor Allo is being unceremoniously dispatched by the Torvo.

No those are not the Allos guts being pulled out- the Torvo has broken through the gastralia of the gravid Allo to target its still developing clutch of eggs. A choice yolky, fatty treat for the Torvo.

So what is going on here?

As I alluded to in "Jurassic Burglar Alarm" preview I took a lot of inspiration from the recent Discovery Channel special Looking for the Giant Squid. This doc provided the first film evidence of Architeuthis in its natural habitat. Although a variety of tactics were used to attempt to lure in the massive cephalopod, from sex hormones to bait, the tactic that proved most useful was spearheaded by Dr. Edie Wedder.

Wedder believed that in order to lure in the giant to camera range they must be as unobtrusive as possible. Simply put the lights, motors and vibrations from previous dives had kept the squid at bay. So she put an unmanned, battery operated remote submersible into the depths and then tested her "burglar alarm" hypothesis.

Wedder devised an e-jelly based on the predator response of the Atolla jellyfish, a midwater jelly found in oceans around the world. When attacked Atolla wyvellei emits a series of pulses to lure in a larger predator- the idea being that the larger predator will take care of whatever is attacking the jelly.

And it worked, vindicating Dr. Wedders hypothesis and providing the world with the first video of Architeuthis in its natural habitat.

As for the show itself, I felt it was pretty well done and what I thought was almost equally interesting as the giant quid footage was the abundance, diversity and startling abundance of other fairly large cephalopods in the habitat of the giant squid.

(c) Discovery

The dives caught footage of the 13' seven armed octopus, Haliphron atlanticus, second largest octopus species; the robust and speedy diamondback squid, Thysanoteuthis rhombus. which often served as bait during the show; and, most impressive, Taningia danae, which itself can grow to several hundred lbs and when was at first mistaken for the giant squid when filmed in the documentary.

Clearly Architeuthis is but one link in a rather diverse and spectacular guild of deep sea squid. And it goes without saying that intraguild predation amongst and between these guys must be a big part of their lifestyle.

And, if you have followed me so far, hopefully you see where I am going with this. Readers of this blog know that I believe intraguild and even intraspecies theropod predation was rampant in the Mesozoic. Like the midwater realm, the Morrison formation had a bevy of diverse theropods and in this pic I am depicting a possible intraguild predatory event between Torvosaurus and Allosaurus.

As evinced by the mauling the baby bronto took it was attacked by the Allosaurus. However the Allo is not a particularly clean killer like felids, but it has a quick and weak bite. If the bronto can sustain the initial onslaught it has an ace in the whole. The bronto bellows, whips it tails and rattles its dorsal spines. The ruckus it raises is not to scare off the Allo- but attract a Torvo. You see, Torvo actually relishes the flesh of other theropods and specializes in killing them. Allos are the most common theropod because of their flexible diet and high fecundity. Torvo knows this from experience and actively targets gravid remale Allos. The bronto escapes and survives its wounds as the Torvo much prefers theropod fodder.

Much to come later...

Cheers

Pertinencia

The Curious Case of the Cannibal Squid