2024 Raincoast Speaker Series
“Strange Creatures”
Embark on a journey into the extraordinary realm of “Strange Creatures”, where the mysterious and captivating unfold around and beneath. As we delve into the depths of the ocean, discover the mesmerizing dance of salps and pyrosomes, ethereal organisms that drift through the currents, creating a spectacle of bioluminescence.
Explore the vibrant underwater world with nudibranchs, the exquisite and colorful sea slugs that navigate our coastal waters. Venture into the realms of freshwater habitats, where giant salamanders lurk, showcasing their impressive size and unique adaptations. Uncover the secrets of nature’s undead with zombie fungi, peculiar organisms that manipulate their host, creating a surreal and haunting spectacle in the forest shadows.
Dive into the depths of the ocean to discover the enigmatic hagfish, resilient creatures with a remarkable slime defense mechanism. Join us for our “Strange Creatures” series, where each presentation unveils the wonders of these remarkable beings, shedding light on their peculiar behaviors and survival strategies in the often overlooked corners of our planet.
On the Thursdays listed below, we’re going strange, and you’re invited to the spectacle.
February 1: Dr. Moira Décima, Salps and Pyrosomes
February 8: Karin Fletcher, Nudibranchs
February 15: Dr. Mizuki Takahashi, Giant Salamanders
February 22: Dr. Andy MacKinnon, Zombi Fungi
April 4: Dr. Douglas Fudge, Hagfish
Salps are poop-machines and pyrosomes can light up the sea!
Dr. Moira Décima is an Assistant Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Curator of the Pelagic Invertebrate Collection
Thursday, February 1st, 7:00 pm
via Zoom
Introducing two unique gelatinous zooplankton and their roles in the ocean. Salps and pyrosomes are zooplankton – free floating animals that drift with the ocean currents. They are unique because they have gelatinous bodies, similar to cnidarian jellies, but unlike jellyfish they don’t have stingers and primarily consume phytoplankton. They are part of a group called ‘thaliaceans’, also related to sea-squirts, which you might be surprised to find out are our closest relatives among all the plankton! They share the remarkable life-history characteristic of alternating sexual and asexual reproduction, which allows their populations to boom (also known as a ‘bloom’) when food is in excess.
Dr. Moira Décima is an Assistant Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Curator of the Pelagic Invertebrate Collection. Dr. Décima combines field work on global class vessels, samples from Collections and experimental manipulations, to answer fundamental questions related to plankton food-web structure and function, species distributions and diversity, and the role of zooplankton in biogeochemical cycling – all within a broader context of ecosystem response to climate change.
Sea Slugs of the Northeastern Pacific
Karin Fletcher has worked with mollusk scientists from all over the world.
Thursday, February 8th, 7:00 pm
via Zoom
Related to dull-colored, garden-munching land slugs, “naked gilled” sea slugs (nudibranchs) are some of the most colorful and charismatic inhabitants of the marine world. They come in all different shapes and sizes – as small as a grain of rice or as large as a loaf of bread – yet these animals have no commercial value. Why are we so fascinated with them? The first part of this presentation will review what a sea slug is, the various families and clades to which they belong and basic steps for classifying and identifying the species that can be found in our area.
For a naturist in search of sea slugs on the beach or underwater, knowing what they eat and their seasonality is the key to spotting different species. The second part will cover my own journey from being a curious newbie scuba diver 18 years ago who had never heard of nudibranchs to an active amateur naturalist who helped describe species previously unknown to science in the northeastern Pacific. In this talk I’ll not only present basic aspects of temperate northeastern Pacific nudibranch biology and ecology but I’ll discuss my 15-year study of the diversity and seasonality of nudibranchs found in my “front yard” to illustrate how anyone’s careful observations can contribute to the body of scientific knowledge.
Karin Fletcher has worked with mollusk scientists from all over the world as a co-author on numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications which have helped to refine the classification of existing species and to identify new species. She is also co-author of the recently published field guide “Nudibranchs & Sea Slugs of the Eastern Pacific”.
Little Known Giant: The life history of the world’s largest amphibians
Dr. Mizuki Takahashi is an associate professor of biology and animal behavior at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, USA.
Thursday, February 15th, 7:00 pm
via Zoom
The giant salamanders in the Family Cryptobranchidae represent the largest amphibians in the world. Five giant salamander species are currently recognized, all of which are of conservation concern. Over the past decade, I have studied the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus a. alleganiensis). In this talk, I will introduce my work on parental care, male-male combat, and conservation issues of the Japanese giant salamander.
The giant salamanders are top predators and thus ecologically important. They are also invaluable to our scholarly field because of their unique life history. Parental care, in particular male parental care, is rare among amphibians. In the giant salamanders, males provide prolonged parental care for embryos and larvae. The giant salamanders are fully aquatic and prey on small invertebrates and vertebrates through suction feeding. However, the giant salamanders have numerous sharp teeth, unlike aquatic, suction-feeding frogs with missing teeth. Our recent study on salamanders’ injuries revealed the intense male-male combats, suggesting the significant function of teeth as weapons.
About our Speaker: Dr. Mizuki Takahashi is an associate professor of biology and animal behavior at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, USA. He was born in Hokkaido and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. As a child, Mizuki enjoyed his freedom and spent after-school hours chasing after small animals in the nearby forest while his parents worked as school teachers. (more on RSVP page)
Are we Prepared for the Zombie (Fungi) Apocalypse?
Dr. Andy MacKinnon is a forest ecologist who lives in Metchosin BC. His fields of study include BC’s native plants, fungi and lichens.
Thursday, February 22nd, 7:00 pm
via Zoom
Zombie fungi are a group of ascomycetes, all formerly in the genus Cordyceps, that parasitize insects (and a few other organisms). The fungi often alter the behaviour of the insects, to the benefit of the fungi, essentially turning the insects into ‘zombies’ under the control of the fungi. Though zombie fungi are best known from tropical and subtropical ecosystems, there are a number of species known from BC, and from Clayoquot Sound. These zombi fungi are the basis of the popular video game, and subsequent television series, ‘The Last of Us’.
About our Speaker: Dr. Andy MacKinnon is a forest ecologist who lives in Metchosin BC. His fields of study include BC’s native plants, fungi and lichens. Andy is co-author of Mushrooms of British Columbia , and of six field guides to plants of western North America. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, and past President of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society.
Hagfishes and Slime
Dr. Douglas Fudge leads the Comparative Biomaterials Lab at Chapman University iin Orange Ca.
Thursday, April 4th, 7:00 pm
via Zoom
Hagfishes are bottom dwelling marine animals that are capable of producing startling amounts of defensive slime when they are provoked. We have investigated the composition and mechanical properties of the slime using a variety of techniques. We have also demonstrated that hagfish slime is especially good at clogging the gills of would-be fish predators, which is likely one of its primary functions in life. The slime is composed of fine protein slime threads as well as a mucus component that comes packaged in tiny vesicles. When these components are ejected from the slime glands, they combine synergistically to form a slime mass in which a large volume of water is entrained. Recent work in this area focused on the deployment of both the fibrous and mucus components of the slime in seawater. We now know that the swelling of the mucus vesicles is accelerated by the presence of water pores known as aquaporins in the vesicle membranes. We have also recently shown that unraveling of protein threads from their coiled state involves the dissolution of a seawater soluble glue and the release of strain energy stored in the thread coils. Current research is focused on understanding the mechanisms by which slime threads are manufactured within the cytoplasm of gland thread cells and identifying the proteins involved in slime deployment.
About our Speaker: Dr. Fudge runs the Comparative Biomaterials Lab at Chapman University. As an undergraduate, he studied biology at Cornell University, followed by an M.A.T. in science education, also at Cornell. For his M.Sc. research, he worked on the biology of bluefin tuna at the University of Guelph, and then moved to the University of British Columbia for his Ph.D., where he worked on the biomechanics of hagfish slime in John Gosline’s lab. As an NSERC postdoctoral fellow, he worked on cell biomechanics in Wayne Vogl’s lab in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He joined the faculty in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph in 2005, where he worked until 2016.
