What's THIS now?

I have a guest blog post today over on Susan Perkin’s fine AMNH blog “Parasite of the Day”, regarding this fascinating cirtter.  What on earth is it?  You’ll just have to roll on over there and check it out

Why should sharks get all the glory? - its shark *PARASITE* week too

 Everytime you sit down to watch a premiere in this weeks Discovery Channel shark week, I want you to imagine something: every single shark you see is loaded with parasites.  All of them.  On the gills, sometimes on the skin, and especially in their unique spiral valve intestine, live a myriad critters that make their living off the top predators in the ocean.  Which makes you wonder, are they really the top?  Hmmmm….

In celebration of this carnival of diversity that exploits our toothy friends, AMNH curator/blogger Susan Perkins (ably supported by a veritable Who’s Who of fish parasitologists from around the world) is hosting a parade of bugs for shark week on her blog Parasite-a-Day. Here’s what she’s had so far:

August1. Anthobothrium, an elegant tapeworm.  Yes, I said elegant.  You got a problem with that?

August 2. Gnathiid isopods.  The ticks of the marine realm, blood meal anyone?

August 3. Branchotenthes robinoverstreeti.  A six-suckered monogenean from the guitarfish

August 4. Pandarus rhincodonicus.  A parasitic copepod that likes to hitch a ride on the lips oif whale sharks.

Keep an eye on the blog for the rest of the week and beyond.  Its a fantastic showcase of parasite diversity

A Parasite a Day, keeps the Doctor in pay

My colleague Susan Perkins at AMNH has a most excellent blog that features a different parasite every day for a year.  Since the oceans have more parasites than anywhere else by far, many of her feature critters are marine.  Check out some of these marine beasties, then enjoy the rest of the collection.  There's a new one every day.

Crepidostomum cooperi - a digenean (fluke) parasite of fish
Nasitrema globicephalae - a digenean parasite of the sinuses of whales
Cyamus ovalis - isopod parasites often called "whale lice"
Maritrema novaezealandensis - an important model digenean from New Zealand mudflat animals
Polypodium hydriforme - a weird parasitic jellyfish relative that lives on sturgeon eggs, and:
Dolops sp., -  a type of Branchiuran (related to crustaceans) parasitic on piranha

The Type Room

This is one of the rooms at AMNH where type series are kept, in this case for fish. A type series is that original set of specimens lodged at a museum when a new species is first described. These are therefore very valuable specimens, in a sense irreplaceable!  Its hard not to feel the gravitas of the mission of museums when faced with something as fundamental as a type series.  We also had a chance to see real coelacanths (they're bigger than I thought!), which was very exciting.

AMNH the reprise

It was a long but fantastic day at the Museum yesterday.  After Bento boxes with the grad studets, I met with folks from their comparative genomics and conservation genetics group including George Amato and Rob deSalle.  Then out for refreshments with the leech lab folks and their intrepid leader and old colleague of mine Mark Siddall. We gasbagged about everything from progressive metal to the latest leech they described, Tyranobdella rex, from up the nose of an unfortunate Peruvian child. What an awesome name. You can read more about it on Mark's blog Bdella Nea, linked from my blog roll somewhere hereabouts.
I didn't get to do everything on the agenda yesterday, so its back to the museum today to meet with people from Ichthyology and take a look at the fish type collection (drool). I might just snag some bit-o-critter pics from among the jars...

Bailer shells

Only at AMNH do they use bailer shells as chip bowls for doritos and salsa...
(don't worry, its not an accessioned specimen)