Recovery, part two.

I don't do mornings. I can't think when it's hot. I need a hard mattress. I can't listen to music while I work. I break out in a rash if I use soap. But I can sleep practically anywhere, and with the light on. I loved the winters up north, when the temperature stuck around -20° Celsius and the wind froze the boiling water I poured out for the rabbits before they even got to it. I don't mind flexible schedules and last-minute plans.

Your mileage may vary. Probably does.

Marine invertebrates are just as individual and persnickety as we humans. Some are more adaptable than others, but they all have their limits, and their needs are comparable to ours.

Here's a partial list of what they may consider essential; different variants of:

• Water: purity, temperature, movement, oxygen content, pressure (depth), tide schedules, salt content, nutrient content.
• Light: from none to bright sunlight.
• Substrate (floors, walls, mattresses, in our world): hardness, chemical content, mobility, edibility, thickness, depth.
• Sound: does this matter to them? It might be something to research.
• Food: where is it found? Size, movement, live or dead, plant or animal.
• Schedules: night and day, tides, seasons.
• Community: do they like to live alone, in pairs, or all piled together indiscriminately? Do they tolerate other species nearby? Are they aggressive or cooperative?

When the conditions in my aquarium are not to her liking, my big anemone lets me know, in no uncertain terms. Pollution in the water? A dead clam smelling up her surroundings? Too much salt, due to evaporation? She shuts her mouth, pulls in her tentacles, puckers her skin disapprovingly. Too much light? She pulls back slightly. Crabs tickling her, or sand on her pedestal? She slides up and away. No water? Like she would do on the beach at low tide, she goes limp and droops, letting gravity stretch her to twice her length; imagine a wet bag full of jelly. (Here's a photo.)

She doesn't like the heat. She's a cold-water animal, and she won't put up with carelessness in the matter of her cooling requirements. A few extra degrees, and she spits out water, makes a button mouth, and flattens herself down against the glass.

Herself and some cousins (or clones), all sulking in the afternoon warmth. Reflected in the water surface.

I was surprised by this; walking on the beach at low tide, I often step into tide pools that feel as warm as a tub bath. The next pool may be cooler, the incoming rush of water quite cold; the intertidal critters seem not to mind the changes. The anemone does.

This particular anemone has been living with me for over two years; we've had a couple of hot summers, and while she grumbled some, she always got over it in time for the evening meal. Not this summer. She spent so much time as a brown pancake that she started to lose weight; even now that she's eating again, her footprint is 5/8 inch, compared to the 1 1/4 she was last spring.

We had a cold July, which was fine with her, and at least gave me a chance to clean out the chemical contamination in the tank. But when the weather warmed up, even though the aquarium was clean, she refused to respond.

Big anemone, shut down, under the Powell River wharf, around noon on a hot day.

For a while, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Everything was the same as last year, or wasn't it? No, it wasn't. Up until this winter, I had kept the tank (it's small) on the windowsill, jammed up against the open window, in the shade of the maple tree. It was the coolest spot in the house. But it was inconvenient; the window got splattered with salt water, and was difficult to clean; I couldn't see the backside without going outside. So I bought a sturdy little table and put it in front of the window. The tank is now there, about a foot from the outside. That little bit of distance was enough to raise the temperature in the tank a few degrees.

I bought an aquarium thermometer and discovered that at 70 °F, room temperature, she shut down. She prefers it below 65.

Not until I started adding icepacks to the water, replacing them several times a day, and keeping a fan a foot away, constantly blowing, did things improve. Now, I get up in the morning, check the anemone -- she's closing down, but not flat yet -- replace the ice pack, and watch her spread out her tentacles, fishing for breakfast. Repeat at noon, supper and bedtime. I"m glad the cool weather is finally upon us.

Next: shutting down, crab style.

Slow recovery, part one

It's been three months since the miniature oil spill that killed most of the animals in my aquarium. A long, hot, difficult three months.

For those that didn't see the original post, here's the story, in brief: air-borne pollution from a construction site next door covered the water, first in my outdoor seaweed bowl, and then in my marine invertebrates aquarium inside, under an open window. Most of the animals died that first week, leaving me with a few crabs and snails, two brain-damaged shrimp and a handful of sick hermits; these last all died by the second week.

The green shore crabs survived, but not without side effects; one big male lost both pincers, the day after he'd molted. The invasive mud snails were fine, as were the little predatory nassas and most of the barnacles. And my big wandering plumose anemone opened for business again.

Community pre-disaster. Small anemones, snails, barnacles and an amphipod.

Since then, I've been silent, at least as far as aquarium blogging goes. I could have tossed the whole thing and started over, putting my few animals into a fresh tank, but I wanted to learn what goes into a recovery in the wild. And just as it is in the ocean, where oil spills take years to clean up, healing my small tank became a long, slow process, with tiny improvements and discouraging setbacks.

The first imperative was to clean the water. This is easier in a small aquarium than in the ocean, of course. A few water changes, each time replacing half the water and cleaning the filter, should have been enough. The tank looked clean, and the crabs and snails went about their business cheerfully. But any animal that came along for the ride in fresh seaweed died in the first few days. I scrubbed the walls of the tank and changed the water again, to no effect.

Female shore crab, pre-disaster.

The maimed crab molted. With the fresh molt, he had regenerated his pincers; they were smaller, less powerful than the originals, but he looked good.

And the very next day, when I fed him, he showed up with no pincers and missing two legs. The smallest of the crabs molted, as well, and lost a pincer the next day. Something was wrong.

One of the last photos of my grainy hand hermit, before the tank was poisoned.

This time, I emptied the tank, scrubbed the walls, and removed the deep sand from the bottom. Once it was out of the water, I could smell it; a rank, chemical smell. There were no small animals alive in it, as there normally are. I dumped the whole lot, and set up the tank with only a dusting of clean, broken shells underfoot.*

All but one of the tiny anemones were gone, but the big one was still there, although she** spent most of her days closed in and hunkered down into a flat plate on the glass. To clean the glass properly, I would have to convince her to move.

Some species of hermits encourage anemones to attach themselves to the hermit's shell, boosting the hermit's weaponry and camouflage. The hermit nudges at the base of the anemone until it detaches from its chosen site, then he holds her gently against his shell until she glues herself down there.

I imitated a hermit. I pushed softly at the base of the anemone with the back of a fingernail. After a while, she let go and drifted to the bottom. I collected her and put her in a plastic bowl to wait until the tank was fresh and clean. When all was ready, I leaned on her again, then moved her back into the tank, down on the bottom with the clean shells. She attached herself, and after a bit of sulking, opened up to feed again. At least something was working!

Small snail, today, eating algae off the glass. The pink circle is the mouth, with the scraping radula.

So that was done. After a couple of weeks with no more deaths, I added a few handfuls of pebbles to the bottom, and began to bring in new snails and amphipods; the snails to keep the algae down, the amphipods to feed the anemone. Things looked good, and I brought home a bag of sand; the crabs and snails dug in happily within minutes. The amphipods started to breed.

Amphipods love these crevices in an old barnacle shell.

But there are other pollutants. Our problems weren't over. The anemone's story continues tomorrow.

*It's a pity we can't do that in the ocean.
** These anemones start out as males, and become females later on. I assume this one is old enough to be a "she".

The best laid schemes ...

...gang aft agley. I'm still working on the anemone post. And tomorrow is a busy day; I've got a report to turn in, even if I have to work all night. The anemone (and an amazing crab) story will have to wait until Wednesday.

Meanwhile, here's the anemone, as s/he looks today; a bit smaller after a rough summer, but still healthy and hungry.

Metridium

And, while I remember; I will be hosting the next Circus of the Spineless here, next week. You may e-mail me your invertebrate posts to wanderinweeta AT gmail DOT com, before the second of October.

Survivor

Anemone and bubbles:

I've been sorting old photos: this is from last January. The anemone survived my tank disaster, one of very few critters that made it. What it has taught me since then will be tomorrow's post.

Artsy critters

 From the sidewalk in front of Paneficio Studios (Strathcona):

Fat cross spider. Lunch is a syrphid fly taco.

Fatter cross spider. I tried to get a photo that showed her girth, but she was having none of it; she kept turning and turning, to keep me and my intrusive camera within reach of her fangs. Check the photo full-size to see the droplets of glue along the web.

Snail on dying Solomon's seal. Artist's window in background.

Well-dressed grasshopper

For once, a grasshopper let me approach without flying away. Maybe he realized that I couldn't climb his rock in a blackberry patch.

Look at his cute "shoes"! (Click on photo.)

For now, he's unidentified.

Found at Mud Bay, end of August.

Splash landing

Canada geese: elegant and dignified on land ...

On the water ...

But complete fumble-feet, coming in for a wet landing ...

They have to ruffle those feathers and flap their wings wildly to brake in the air; these are heavy birds. But then they try to land on their feet, as though they thought the water was solid ground.

They need bigger feet.

Mini-marsh

On our way down the Sunshine Coast, we took a break at Pender Harbour. The last time we were there, we had only stopped long enough to check with the information booth about nearby lodging. This time we dawdled through town, exploring, until we saw a used bookstore. We can never resist one of those!

We would be browsing for a good while*, so I looked for a parking spot in heavy shade, and found it, right beside the entrance to a wetlands trail; something unexpected where the hills rush down to the sea. It was a small marshy area, half dry after a hot summer, with a board walk through the cattails. A pair of herons took off at our approach and went grumbling into the shadows at the far end; crows squabbled overhead in a tall arbutus.

And over the water, between the cattails, red and blue dragonflies zipped back and forth in the sunshine, pausing only briefly to rest on cattail leaves.

Male Western pondhawk, maybe.

Cardinal meadowhawk.

*We shopped for a good hour, and bought a bagful of books. Out-of-the-way bookstores often turn out to contain hidden treasure. This one certainly did. We'll be back! Besides, looking at the map later, I realize that we missed most of the sights of the area. There's a long, heavily indented coast bristling with boat ramps, islands and bays and marinas, a tiny lake, parks and campsites. Next time, we'll plan on spending the day.

Stored sunlight

September has finally broken the spell; this hot summer is ending. The nights are cool and the maple leaves are working on their fall dye job. There are pumpkins in the supermarket - already? - and end-of-season, local fruits and veggies: peaches and prune plums, tomatoes and cukes.

At Crescent Beach this weekend, sea and sky were equally grey. We found life and colour on the shoreward side, instead.

Bindweed leaves, aging beautifully.

The last gasp of the buddleia.

Tall, prickly, tough teasels.

Goldenrod and tansy and seed capsules in the background. There are at least 5 flying insects on that one goldenrod head; only two are the same species. Can you find them?

Old man's beard (or Traveler's Joy, or ...) and dry tansy heads. The red spots in the background are rose hips.

Gone to seed. Birds love these.

And the obligatory maple leaf.

So that's how they do it!

A  crane fly has waited on my window several mornings in a row, begging to have his photo taken. I finally obliged, and he went away. He hasn't been back to see the proofs yet.

Outside view, with flash and quadruple reflections.

From the inside, no flash.

Since this spring, I have been working my way through a college textbook on invertebrates. (Living Invertebrates, Pearse/Buchsbaum) It's a fascinating read. A few weeks ago, I came across this fact: see those two little knobs sticking out from the sides of the crane fly? They are all that remain of the second pair of wings many other insects (bees, beetles, dragonflies, butterfies, etc.) have. The flies belong to the order Diptera, meaning "two-wings"; they only have one pair of wings and these useless-looking knobs.

That I knew; what astounded me was that, if you cut off these tiny halteres, the insect can't fly.

The halteres serve as balancing rods and part of the fly's guidance system. Both of them flap up and down when the wings do, but out of phase with the wings, each one vibrating, as well, in a different plane. As the fly's body turns in flight, sensory organs at the base of each haltere register the resistance of the knob to this change; this information enables the flies to control their flight, and incidentally, to thumb their noses at me and my fly swatter.*

This kind of work revealed why, while fleeing a rolled-up newspaper, for example, a fly can carry out a right angle turn in as little as 30 thousandths of a second. The secret seems to rest in their halteres, a pair of club-shaped organs that beat out of phase with the wings. Prof Dickinson found they act as critical way-stations for information from the insect's brain, taking visual cues from the eye and then relaying them to wing-steering muscles, in addition to making counter motions to help to end a turn. (From The Telegraph, 2005)

*Used mainly for mosquitoes. Which escape to bite another day, as often as not.

Unforgettable Jervis Inlet

Thank you, all, for your good thoughts for my grandson. The surgery was postponed for a day, but it is finally done, the surgeon says it went fine, and my grandson is resting peacefully. Now, I think, I can get back to normal life. (So will he, but it will take some time.)

So: back to the vacation series (alternating with current wanderings and visitors). These are from Saltery Bay, on the Sunshine Coast.

We arrived too early in the morning for the ferry, and went instead to Saltery Bay Provincial Park, a couple of kilometres back up the highway. Although it was past 9 AM, the water still had that hard-to-describe, but unforgettable, morning clarity, transparent at our feet, cool blue farther out. A light mist softened the distant hills. It was so quiet that tiny sounds stood out individually; a wavelet on the rocks, voices across the water, the whisper of a breeze in the evergreens.

The boat launch, blue water, and Laurie.

Swim gear drying on the edge of the boat launch.

The road down from the highway ends at Jervis Inlet, where there is a day-use picnic area. Campsites are in the next bay, closer to the ferry landing.

At anchor in the bay.

Mist and people standing in tiny boats.

Out fishing.

Clouds and contrails

Remebering Powell River: sunset from the hillside.

Contrails over the water

Fantastic shapes

Blogging may continue to be light for the next few days. A family medical emergency is taking up my time and energy. (My grandson will be having surgery today to patch up a collapsed lung.)

A Skywatch post.

Wordless: Dry

Spider-hunting wasp

I've said it before, and probably will again; this why I love blogging! On the first of my Rock Flipping Day posts, I showed a photo of a "fly" that I found underneath a rock. And a second photo that I captioned, "What made this?"

This morning, there was a comment on the post: "Your fly is a wasp. ...  Pompilidae, or spider-hunting wasps."

Of course, I looked up the Pompilidae. I found them on BugGuide, and studied the description. Among other characteristics I couldn't verify from my photos, there was this,

... the Pompilidae have the pronotum extending back to the tegulae, the pronotum thus appearing triangular when viewed from the side and horseshoe-shaped when viewed from above.

And sure enough, in my three-quarters view I could see the triangle. In the other, the horseshoe shape. I went on to read the section on food:

Larvae feed on spiders. In some groups the females sting and paralyze their prey and then transport it to a specially constructed nest before laying an egg; in others, leave the paralyzed spider in its nest and lay an egg upon it.

So this was why I found the wasp under a rock inhabited by two large spiders; it's either a new-hatched wasp, or a female looking for a spider to lay an egg in. (And the ones that needed to escape were the spiders, not the wasp, as I had supposed.)

There's more! I browsed through BugGuide's image pages, looking for this particular wasp; spider wasp with orange abdomen, black antennae. I found several, in Texas and Florida, probably not the same species as this one. And then, after a dozen or so pages, I started running into photos of clay or mud cases, the "nest" where a wasp would lay one egg, with a paralyzed spider for larva food.

They look like this one.

I found what appears to be the same species as mine, Priocnemis oregona, from Oregon to our south, and a match from Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island, northwest of here, classified as simply Prioncemis. There are no samples of egg cases for this species in the BugGuide pages, but these, from Tennessee are typical, although bigger than most. Some are closed, some open;, one even has a larva inside it.

So there we have it; a correction leads to the solution of a mystery.

Oh, and here's the spider that's potentially the next batch of larva food:

A bit bigger than the wasp, but stealth, speed and venom may best size.

Thanks, James!

Water makes all the difference

Rock Flipping Day 2011, continued...

It was a relief to come back to my own sheltered, well-watered garden after the expedition to the desert-like conditions of the vacant lot. (Between a rock and a dry place).  I recovered my enthusiasm for the search, and decided to turn over some of my own rocks. And here, the moisture lovers thrive.

A few rocks and turtles holding down the base of a wooden heron.

Under the rocks, an orange slug nibbles the heron's toes.

Every rock concealed at least one or two earthworms.

On the bottom of a paving stone, a clump of snail or slug eggs, and a woodbug.

Tiny white springtails. These don't tolerate drying out.

I thought this was a single snail egg until I saw the photo; it is covered with white silk. A spider egg sac, probably.

Millipede. One of many.

The large fake rock (styrofoam) sheltered hundreds of beasties. Slugs and woodbugs clung to the underside of the "rock".  On the ground, rove beetles and millipedes dashed for cover, centipedes and worms burrowed quickly into the soft soil, leaving only many more woodbugs and slugs.

Temporarily tame woodbug.

So my summer schedule of watering every night has paid off; the garden is alive, top and bottom.