Encyclopedia of Life Blog

Stories of giant sea monsters have frightened people since the beginning of time.

Some of the scariest tales involve an enormous squid that attacks boats and scares sailors with its’ mammoth tentacles.

Over the years, the long-armed creatures have gained a legendary status. However, uncharacteristic of most myths, giant squid are unusual because they actually do exist.

Courtesy of Glenn Rankin, Smithsonian Institution

But where can you find one of these monstrous creatures?

Giant squid, Architeuthis dux, inhabit depths of up to 1,000 meters below the oceans’ surface, making them one of the most enigmatic species on our planet – there has only been one sighting of a live squid ever recorded.

Much information is still unknown about giant squids because of their deep habitat, but over the years scientists have discovered several unique facts about this species.

Have you ever wondered how big a giant squid really is?

Imagine that a single squid eye is the size of your head – think about looking out of that every day!

Their extremely large eyes help them see in the dark depths of the ocean, aiding in navigation and food location.

Although the squid has few predators, its largest and most dangerous threat is the sperm whale, which can grow up to 40-50 feet long and weigh 30-40 tons, while the squid is usually 35-45 feet long, making the whale an equal, but slightly larger, opponent.

When it is time to hunt, squid capture prey using their eight powerful arms and two long feeding tentacles, about 10-12 meters in length, which dart out to grip the squid’s prey, grabbing and pulling it towards their sharp beak. The undersides of the squid’s tentacles are surrounded by suckers, called clubs. These tentacular clubs are in the shape of sub-spherical cups, and are lined with sharp, finely serrated rings of chitin, a tough membranous protein material, in four longitudinal rows. The parrot-shaped beak, which can be strong enough to sever a steel cable, is used to crush the squid’s food into bite-sized pieces.

Before the squid can digest its’ prey, it is shred with an organ called a ‘radula,’ located on the squid’s tongue, which will push the food down the squid’s esophagus to its digestive organs.

Further studies have found that, unlike humans and a majority of species, squids’ blood is actually a blueish color due to the copper-containing compound haemocyanin. Humans and other species have red blood due to iron-based hemoglobin.

Because squid live in such depths below the oceans’ surface, their blood does not carry oxygen well in warm water. If the creature is exposed to warmer temperatures, it will eventually suffocate and most likely die.

Scientists have discovered that these colossal creatures have yet another rare feature: three hearts; two brachial hearts that pump blood to their gills, where oxygen is taken up, and one systemic heart where blood is pumped to the rest of the body.

If having three hearts is not enough for the giant squid, a recent study found that new born squid learn through a trial and error method similar to a humans’ learning process. The squid’s intricate nervous system and complex brain suggest that they are among the smartest creatures to ever inhabit the earth.

Today, giant squid continue to be one of the rarest and most mystifying creatures to ever roam the sea. So next time you are 1,000 meters below sea level, be on the lookout for a giant squid – you may be one of the lucky few to catch a glimpse.

Check out the EOL Learning + Education podcast on giant squid to find out more!

After three years of rapid growth on our quest to populate a web page for each species known to science, the EOL Species Pages Group is ready to go beyond the low-hanging fruit.

How many and what species should EOL aim to have very rich pages for in the next few years? What does a very rich page include? How many species in the world are lesser known, and what can EOL do to provide at least some rudimentary information about them? In general, where are the gaps in knowledge of biological diversity?

These are among the questions we have been discussing with scientists in meetings at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and at a breakout group at last month’s iEvoBio conference in Portland, Oregon.

More than twenty scientists gathered in Washington, DC to discuss strategies for prioritizing EOL Content Development

A recent review (Chapman 2009) pegs the total number of known species at 1.9 million. Even the more conservative estimates (Hamilton et al. 2010) suggest that adding as-yet undescribed species would bring the total to at least 5.5 million.  As of this summer, EOL has nearly 1 million pages with at least a link to primary literature, and 400,000 pages with at least text or an image. It is a start, but what next?

Twenty-seven participants in the Smithsonian workshop provided more than thirty lists of specific species that could be considered “high impact,” or important to society or to ecosystems. They also began estimating what percentage of taxonomic groups  have little or no information beyond the original descriptions.  We’re in the process of merging those lists and estimates. And we’re looking for more ideas for our “hitlist.”

Some interesting strategies for determining what organisms are most important for the richest EOL pages were suggested: What organisms have a high number of results in Google searches, or are tracked by Google Trends? Which have long pages in Wikipedia? How many organisms actually have common names? Which taxa are associated with a large number of active researchers, or appear in many overlapping phylogenetic or genetic sequence analyses?

"Brown pelican" searches on Google over time. The most recent surge in interest (peak F) is due to their vulnerability to the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

Identifying those organisms which have been understudied might be easy — the small ones (with a few notable exceptions, like disease-causing organisms). Jon Coddington recommends we prioritize family pages  (or other higher level pages as appropriate) for those groups that contain lesser-known organisms. Then we can offer at least placeholder information on each species page until more detailed information is available.

Jon Norenburg suggested that we adapt real species diversity measures, such as the Shannon Index, to help automate the process of assessing how rich a particular page is — a truly rich page should have diverse information. Others point out that users can tell us if a page is rich or not, from their point of view.

One of the most provocative challenges came from Mark Metz, who argued that we should focus on providing tools so scientists and organizations can visualize and reorganize data. Then those stakeholders will be motivated to add the taxon-specific data they need.

Our software developers are hard at work building tools and APIs that allow visualization and re-use of the information shared through EOL. Whether that will motivate those with information to share it will only become clear over time. Meanwhile, we’ll be sifting through lists and ideas to develop a strategy for content. We welcome anyone who would like to participate in the planning process — just contact us.

References

Chapman, A. D. 2009. Number of Living Species in Australia and the World.  2nd edition.  Report for the Australian Biological Resources Study Canberra, Australia. http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/index.html

Hamilton et al. 2010. Quantifying uncertainty in estimation of tropical arthropod species richness. Am Nat 176:90–95.  doi: 10.1086/652998

It was certainly a ‘fishy’ situation when 2010 EOL Rubenstein Fellow Chris Kenaley began working with Dr. Ted Pietsch at the University of Washington back in 2005.

“Chris found me,” Pietsch said. “He was at Harvard working on deep-sea fishes, and I was one of the very few people in the country with a program in deep-sea ichthyology willing and able to take on graduate students, so in 2005 Chris came on board and we have been working together ever since.”

The duo has been working hand-in-hand on a variety of projects, including organizing the recent EOL BioSync workshop, which focused on surveying the biodiversity of all deep-sea fishes.

“We found that over 5,200 species inhabit the open ocean below 200 meters, nearly double our initial estimate,” Kenaley said. “This was astonishing, even for a seasoned deep-sea systematist like Ted.”

Kenaley knows that the principal gain from his time as a Fellow is the knowledge and practice within his field.

“The most important asset I’ll take from this experience will be a database of the taxonomic data for the most diverse deep-sea groups to build upon later in my career,” Kenaley said. “I’m also learning how to package taxonomic information for consumption outside the normal scientific channels, i.e., journal articles and professional meetings.”

Pietsch attributes Kenaley’s successful research to his “out of the box” thinking.

“Chris’s work extends from describing new species to the way fishes see under water and how they use bioluminescence in deep-sea loosejaw dragonfishes,” Pietsch said. “One of Chris’s major publications focuses on the nerves that control cephalic photophores – small organs on the head that produce light, especially those that produce red light – revealing evolutionary homologies among the species.”

Chris has discovered that red is a color that no other fish can see, thus enabling loosejaw fishes to attack prey unknowingly, Pietsch said.

Not only does Kenaley have a first-hand understanding of contributing to the field of science, but also the important role that EOL plays in the field.

Kenaley recognizes that EOL is “here to stay” and will serve, now, and in the future, as the interface between an inquisitive public and biodiversity scientists.

“I will continue to funnel my data and results into the EOL framework,” Kenaley said. “I’m also committed to encouraging my colleagues to do the same.”

The pairing of mentor to mentee within the EOL Rubenstein Fellow program has proved more than successful for Kenaley and Pietsch.

“Aside from being an outstanding mentor, Ted’s been a model for those scientists interested in deep-sea taxa,” Kenaley said. “It is his work that combines the use of natural history collections as databases and the explanatory power of phylogenetics that is inspiring to me.”

The respect and understanding between Pietsch and Kenaley has only been strengthened over the past five years.

“I love this guy,” Pietsch said. “But I think it would be best for him to move on and make his own way in life, and when all is said and done, I hope Chris will find an academic teaching position that he loves.”

Kenaley will work with Pietsch for the remainder of his EOL fellowship, continuing to learn and grow from each new experience.

Credit: James Di Loreto ; Chris Kenaley, second row, far right

EOL is now accepting applications for its 2011 Rubenstein Fellows competition. For more information on the program and to download the application package, please visit the EOL fellows page. 

The BioBlitz at Biscayne National Park wrapped up today with a tally of 810 different species found over a 24-hour span.  National Geographic and the U.S National Park Service brought together 2,300 people including teams of school kids, educators, families and individuals to work side-by-side with 150 scientists to inventory the species in the park.  Out on boats, snorkeling, walking on keys and looking, recording and identifying all day and night was hard work and rewarding.   The total number of species is expected to increase over the coming weeks and months as scientists finalize identifications back at their labs.  So, stay tuned to the EOL BioBlitz pages to get the final tally.

With excitment high from an awesome 24-hours of discovery the 2011 BioBlitz at Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Arizona, USA was announced.  EOL will be there again next year to support citizen science activities in the run up to the National Park Service centennial.

• 1500 school kids from kindergarten through high school
• 150 scientists specializing in tiny marine insects, giant manatees, and everything in between
• 6 species of microalgae that were previously not known to exist in Biscayne National Park

That’s the tally at the end of our first day of the National Geographic – National Park Service 2010 Bioblitz in Biscayne National Park. Members of the EOL team joined citizen scientists, volunteers, and enthusiastic kids and adults to explore the park’s waters, reefs, islands and shorelines to identify as many species as possible. Participants counted, mapped, and learned all about the Biscayne Bay’s diverse organisms which include everything from microscopic bacteria to sea turtles weighing hundreds of pounds.

The EOL activity table was a hit!

At the EOL activity table (pictured), students played games to learn more about species habitats while teachers chatted with us about ways they could integrate EOL tools in the classroom. And everybody at the event was talking about and the importance of protecting the biodiversity of this extraordinary place.

To learn more about some of the species that inhabit the park, check out the EOL Biscayne Field Guide . It is still under development, so let us know what you think.
If you live in the area, we hope to see you tomorrow at day two of the Blitz. If not, you can follow the action on Twitter and check back for an updated blog post.

The National Geographic-National Park Service BioBlitz is coming to Florida’s Biscayne National Park April 30 and May 1, 2010.

Visit EOL at eol.org before, during and after the Blitz to learn more about the plants and animals that can be found in Biscayne National Park. To get in the mood for the marine biodiversity you’ll be observing, listen to an EOL podcast on box jellyfish or sea cucumbers. You can also dive into a virtual coral reef at WhyReef.com to learn fun facts about marine ecosystems and food webs.

During the BioBlitz, participants can help to grow the Encyclopedia of Life by participating in our photo scavenger hunt. Just pick up a sheet at the EOL table in the exhibit area before beginning your adventure and try to mark off everything on the list. We’re offering great prizes for those who return the sheet at the end of their BioBlitz and upload their images to the EOL Biscayne BioBlitz Flickr group.

Even if you do not participate in the scavenger hunt, there will be information available to help you upload your images from home or school. It’s free and easy. Once you have uploaded images, they will show up on EOL so others can find what they saw and learned during the BioBlitz.

About 95 percent of the national park is under water, and world-renowned marine scientists will be on hand for the event to help identify species and answer questions.

EOL will also be at the Blitz and we hope to see you there. If you can’t make it, be sure to check this blog, our Twitter feed (@eoflife) and Facebook for frequent updates on the action!

Amanita muscaria

Time for another update from the Biology of Aging project. We have released a new version of LigerCat with new features and faster search. As I wrote on this blog earlier, LigerCat it is a tool that allows you to search PubMed using words or even a DNA/protein sequence. A tag cloud is generated from the MeSH descriptor tags.

Using the newer faster LigerCat we searched about 1.3 million species names from EOL and found more than 65,000 were mentioned in articles in PubMed. The tag clouds for these species are displayed on their species pages under “Biomedical Terms.”

Amanita muscaria is mentioned in more than 100 articles in PubMed.

It can be fun to see how these organisms are related to medicine and health. For example the bright red mushroom, Amanita muscaria, is mentioned in more than 100 articles in PubMed. Some of the MeSH descriptors associated with those articles are Mushroom Poisoning, Poland, and Environmental Monitoring.

To explore the articles related to Amanita muscaria or fly agaric as it is commonly called, just click on the tag cloud and you will see the cloud at the LigerCat site.

From here you can see one of the new features we added to LigerCat, Publication History graphs that show the related articles as a graph over time.

Publication History show the earliest article published in 1879.

Add the MeSH cloud to your blog or website.

The graph as displayed on the LigerCat website is interactive. Mousing over the graph will highlight years and display the number of articles from that year that your search retrieved. Clicking on the bar for that year performs the search in PubMed and takes to that result page. Fly agaric has a long history in the medical literature. The first article was published in 1879.

Another new feature is the ability to easily grab a code snippet so you can put a MeSH cloud on your blog or home page.

I encourage you to continue the exploration. For instance the MeSH cloud for Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) with 278 articles or Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) with nearly 8000 articles in PubMed have some interesting and perhaps unexpected medical connections.

(This post was written by guest author Raphael Rosen)

In 2005, researchers from the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea were near Easter Island, and a mile and a half below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, when they discovered a creature that was so unusual, so bizarre, that biologists had to create a new taxonomic category in which to put it.

Yeti crab, image courtesy of noaa.gov

The creature — Kiwa hirsuta, or the “Yeti crab”  — looks like it is wearing arm mufflers made out of fuzzy yarn, as if it were about to go for a brisk walk in the snow.  Scientists still don’t understand the purpose of the hairs: some believe that they trap bacteria on which the crab feeds, and some believe that the same bacteria help filter toxic chemicals.  In either case, the discovery of an entirely new family of animals only five years ago demonstrates the vastness of planet Earth, and how much human beings have yet to learn.

This discovery also highlights the importance of biodiversity.  2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, and groups from Kenya to Japan are holding conferences and celebrations to bring attention to the importance of diversity in the world’s ecosystems. Encyclopedia of Life is implicitly a part of this effort, since it was created to help people appreciate the amazing interconnectedness of life on Earth, and have easy access to knowledge about it.

But, while detractors might believe that conserving biodiversity merely entails protecting obscure animals that most people have never encountered, and that have no impact on human society, the opposite is true.  Protecting as many species as possible can benefit human beings: much of the medicine that people use to treat disease — medicine ranging from aspirin to penicillin — originated from discoveries made in the natural world.  These helpful chemical concoctions were not invented in a lab; rather, they were derived from willow bark and bacteria, from living beings all around us.  Morphine, one of the most potent pain-killers prescribed by doctors, is created from poppy plants.  Digitoxin, a chemical that is used to treat congestive heart failure, comes from the purple foxglove, a flowering biennial.  Protecting the wide range of plants and animals in the world is an efficient way to ensure a future supply of as-of-yet undiscovered medicines.  And, browsing through EOL gives a good sense of just how large the potential supply is.

Perhaps one day someone will discover a chemical found in the Yeti crab, or a rare bird in Madagascar, that helps treat diabetes or lung cancer.  Perhaps, in this year celebrating biodiversity, we will remember how biodiversity affects us all.  In any case, EOL will hopefully  be a central force for educating the public about biodiversity for years to come.

(This post was written by guest author Raphael Rosen)

The EOL Biodiversity Synthesis Group and Learning and Education Group have collaborated to create educational species pages on the mammoth (Mammuthus), mastodon (Mammut americanum), giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), and two types of giant ground sloths (Megatherium americanum and Mylodontidae).  These pages were created to coincide with the new traveling Mammoth and Mastodon:Titans of the Ice Age exhibition opening at The Field Museum in Chicago, IL, USA and serves as an example for how museums might use EOL with their exhibits.

The species pages contain information on the biology and ecology of these Pleistocene mammals and unique fossil photos from the collections of The Field Museum.  These pages are the perfect complement to the Mammoth and Mastodon:Titans of the Ice Age exhibition.  This exhibition features a 42,000-year-old intact baby mammoth named Lyuba, and allows you to journey back through the Ice Age to view some of Earth’s largest and most awe-inspiring mammals through monumental video installations, hands-on interactive displays, life-sized models, fossil tusks and skulls, and even touchable teeth.  By looking through and reading the Pleistocene mammal species pages, visitors will be better prepared for the exhibit and are sure to have a richer experience.

These Pleistocene mammals pages are not just for viewing and reading.  They can be used as a dynamic tool for exhibition visitors to share what they learned with the world.  The EOL and Natural History Museums page of the Learning and Education Group site has several ideas for classes and families that use these EOL pages.  These activities can be applied to any visit to a natural history museum with exhibits featuring Pleistocene mammals. Some of the activities include: adding text and information found in the exhibition to the species pages, uploading original artwork, and uploading images from a photo scavenger hunt.  Participants will not only enjoy learning about Mammoths and Mastodons, but also help build the Encyclopedia of Life!

These species pages and accompanying activities are EOL’s first endeavor to link with a traveling natural history museum exhibit.  Natural history museums contain a wealth of information on extant and extinct species that can be contributed to help build EOL species pages. There is also great potential for EOL to bring certain digital media opportunities to museums, such as kiosks, flickr cascades, augmented reality, and mobile devices.  In the future museum visitors could download or upload personalized tours which utilize EOL content, display the species photos they take while at the institution, and complete scavenger hunts that explore biodiversity of the institution.  These are just a few of the ways that EOL can become a vital and dynamic part of natural history museums, as well as zoos and aquariums.

Move aside, Moby Dick–these whales have their own stories to tell and battles to win.

The good

When it comes to being a naturalist, or anything resembling the description, you can come pretty close to having a dream job.

Robin Baird is a marine biologist at the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington. For a study surveying the number of Kogia sightings around Hawaii, he and his colleagues spent three years going out on boats to look for two whale species that are rare, seldom sighted and not well known.

Sounds tough, right? It gets even more complicated if you’re not an expert in marine mammals. The species in question–pygmy sperm whales and their close cousins, dwarf sperm whales–resemble sharks with their pointy heads and slits that look an awful lot like gills.

But they’re false gills. And the pointy head–well, that may just be a fluke in natural selection. They’re not at all related to sharks. Kogia breviceps and Kogia sima are both part of the same family as the sperm whale, but it sounds like Baird and his colleagues had more fun looking for these whales than Captain Ahab ever did hunting down Moby Dick.

The main difference between the two species is their size. Pygmies are just a bit bigger. Adult male pygmies can be up to 10 feet long, about the height of a basketball rim, while the largest dwarf sperm whales measure no longer than 8 feet.

Pygmy sperm whales prefer tropical, subtropical and temperate waters (don’t we all), and they are not known to migrate. Marine biologists know very little about them though, because they tend to avoid vessels and can only be seen at a distance. The only time researchers can really get up close to them is when they get stranded.

Now put these factors together:

1) Location: You’re sailing around the Hawaiian Islands for work. Need I say more?

2) The whales are small, but hard to identify down to the species level. It’s a bit of a challenge to get close to them, since they tend to avoid vessels. So there’s a sense of victory when catching up to them and snapping some photos.

These dwarf sperm whale photos come from some of Baird’s expeditions:

(c) Photo Credit: Annie Douglas, Cascadia Research Institute

(c) Photo Credit: Robin Baird, Cascadia Research Institute

3) Since you can’t get close to them, you rely on photos to identify individual whales. Scientists typically look for markings and distinct shapes in the whales’ dorsal fins. When you come back a year later to look for more, you might recognize whales from the previous year. If you do this kind of field work long enough, it’s like attending an annual family reunion!

The bad

Pygmy sperm whales are not often sighted except when they’re stranded or accidentally caught in fishnets. It’s often mothers and calves that get stranded, so the phenomenon might have something to do with motherhood. Sadly, people haven’t been very successful in trying to rescue the animals and return them to their habitats, or to resuscitate them in aquariums..

But while humans may not be up to the task, Pogo the dolphin had the right idea!

And the funny

This may not be the highlight of a naturalist’s career, but here’s an image that’ll imprint these whales in your minds forever.

Aside from their size, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales can be distinguished from other cetaceans—whales, dolphins and porpoises—by a certain behavioural characteristic.

Squids are known to release clouds of ink to confuse predators. It’s handy when the predators don’t expect it, but pygmy and dwarf sperm whales have been observed doing something very similar.

They release clouds of dark fecal matter—yes, that’s right—when they are startled or excited.

After studying some of the stranded whales, biologists have concluded that pygmy and dwarf sperm whales feed largely on cephalopods, including squids. It’s thought that for dwarf sperm whales at least, these dark clouds can be used to distract their prey.

Now there’s no science to back this particular interaction (yet), but just picture the potential battle between these whales and their prey. One side squirts ink, the other expels…poop. The result: one epic battle.