Here at the museum we've recently had the good fortune of several new donations to our collection. There are three donations in particular that I want to talk about, because of how they relate to a neat little system of snail versus beetle; and the evolution of Snail-Eater beetles.
For the first recent donation, we got a very large collection of shells from Dr. Mike Mather from the University of Arts and Sciences of Oklahoma, who is one of the best experts of Oklahoma mollusks and gave us a large set of shells from the Eastern United States. This is a very important donation because there are not that many opportunities to have shells identified by experts like him, so we are very lucky! While most of the shells are fairly large freshwater mollusks, many are also very very small.
New Zealand mud-snail, which is a problem in California; but you can see the small sizes these can come in! Especially when you compare to the Giant African Land snail from last week's post
How small these snails can be was even more apparent when I looked at how small the snails were for our next donation. Dr. Wyckoff, our former archeology curator, took part in a massive survey of land snails across a large portion of the United States, and is donating some of his snails to our collection over the next few years to compliment our existing collection and Dr. Mather's collection. Many of the shells are just as small as the picture above, and show just how diverse many of these snails can be in size, shape, and location across North America. Its this diversity that makes the next group of invertebrates I'll talk about such a neat group: how they've managed to evolve mouth parts to feed on snails.
An example of variation in snails; this case color variation
With so many different snails out there and many of them in pretty good supply, there has been a group of beetles called the Snail-Eater Beetles that have evolved to feed on them. Snail-Eater Beetles belong to the predatory group of beetles called Carabidae, or Ground Beetles, and primarily feed on snails, slugs and the occasional banana (for some reason bananas make good traps for these beetles).
A small Purple Snail-Eater Beetle from Le Flore Co., Oklahoma. This specimen is now part of our collection thanks to the donation of Dr. Vitt and Dr. Caldwell. Unfortunately the picture doesn't get the metallic purple of their Purple name.
The "Purple" of the Purple Snail-Eaters. This image and the following image are from Bugguide.net
These beetles are some of my favorites not just because of their pretty purple color, but their unusual mouthparts. This brings us to our last donation of several thousands of insect specimens by Dr. Laurie Vitt and Dr. Jan Caldwell, of the SNOMNH Herpetology department. In addition to the very well-curated and preserved specimens from Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida, their donation included two of these neat, unique, and pretty little beetles. Both specimens are from Le Flore County, and are pretty small: about 4-5cms.
When I would find these guys in Virginia (my home state), many were much larger than this species. Therefore, the first thing I thought when I saw these little guys was there has to be a correlation with their small size and the snails they feed on here in Oklahoma. After all, the shape of their heads and mouthparts have to do with what sized snail they are trying to get.
Snail-Eater sticking its head into a snail shell to get its prey
In fact, these beetles have mouthparts especially "designed" to open snail shells from the front. However, there is a trade-off to having a smaller head to fit inside the shells, especially the tiny-tiny ones. According to a study highlighted in this article, the evolutionary trade-off occurred from the wide-headed, strong-jawed general Carabidae family to the slender, can-opening shape of the Snail-Eaters. At some point in time, it was more beneficial to switch from crushing snails shells to actually getting the head into the opening (operculum). As a result of this, one group of beetles evolved down this track of having a head-shape that will get into a snail shell instead.
"Can-opening" shape of Snail-Eater jaws
Related Carabidae; that head won't fit into a snail shell for sure!
Carabid relative eating a crushed snail
So, just as there is a wide variety of snail sizes and morphologies, there is a wide-variety of beetles that have evolved to take advantage of these snails. And thanks to the recent donations to our collection, we have examples of both group's diversity!
If you garden, you're probably very familiar with the infamous slug. The slimy, slender, shell-less mollusk that turns the prize tomato you've been waiting for all week into a slimy pile of goo in the morning, usually after an all-night feast. Or destroys your precious lettuce, like this picture below:
Slugs are closely related to snails. Though they don't have a shell on the outside of their body like snails, they have a very small shell in the middle-back area of their body under the skin (the "shield" of the slug). Like snails, both groups feed on fruits, vegetables, and other matter with a mouth that "rasps" off little bits of food. Its kind of like a sander, scraping off layers into their mouth with a rough tongue.
Snail rasping mouth parts
One of the largest species of slugs you can find around here in Oklahoma is Limax maximus, the leopard slug or great gray slug. This fairly big and spotted slug was introduced into the United States in the late 1800's from its native range in England and Europe. It also can be found munching on garden lettuce, and can be found frequenting lawns. They can get up to 10-20cms!
Great Gray or Leopard Slug
However, in terms of large slugs, nothing beats the Banana slugs of the Northwestern United States. These super-sized and colorful slugs of the genus Ariolimax can reach up to 25cms long. They are so ubiquitous and colorful that the Banana slugs were used as mascots for the University of California Santa Cruz!
Most of these native and non-native slugs are at most a nuisance to gardeners. They can do a lot of damage to your garden if left unattended, but they stick mostly to plants. However, there is one recently introduced snail to Florida that not only eats more than plants, it is HUGE. This is the re-introduced Giant African Land Snail.
The Giant African Land Snail not only can reach an amazing 8inches in length, but they can eat stucco on walls, completely defoliate bushes and plants, and transmit meningitis (a nasty disease). It initially was introduced in Florida in 1966 by a boy that snuck it into Florida from Hawaii as a possible pet, but was then released by his grandmother into the yard. It took an estimated 1 million dollars and 10 years to get that outbreak of snails contained. So, when the snail reappeared last year, it hit the news waves of how bad this could be: CBS news Washington Post Miami Herald
Compared to the Giant African Land Snail, our native and not-native Great Gray slugs look like wimps.
So how can we stop these super-sized or not-so-super sized mollusks? Well, for Florida there are a bunch of guidelines about how to deal with the snails since they can transmit that disease. However, for our Oklahoma slugs and snails there is a traditional remedy that still stands true for controlling their populations: BEER.
For some reason slugs and snails love beer, and it has been a method used by most gardeners to control their slugs. They can't resist it. So, if you place a pan or lid of a jar filled with beer out in your garden at night, the next morning you'll find lots of drunk, immobilized slugs to remove. This method hasn't been tried (as far as I know) for the Giant African Land Snails, but it can at least work for you here in Oklahoma if you want an eco-friendly way to protect your garden from our native slimy slugs, big or small.
So as you drink a beer this Friday night toast to our slimy cohort, and save them a sip!
Ever noticed the little "posted by" tags at the end of our posts? No? Well, have a look and you'll see that my author name is Tardigrade. This is one of my absolute favorite invertebrates out there. They're tough, tiny, and ubiquitous - and they've even been to outer space!
I first heard about tardigrades (commonly known as water bears) in my Invertebrate Biology class, and honestly? I was kind of enchanted with them. First of all, for being microscopic, they're surprisingly cute and cuddly-looking. They lumber along like a bear, (hence their common name) and they've got tiny claws at the end of each "paw."
Go ahead and coo over these for a minute. You just can't help it.
Tardigrades are everywhere - you can find them in your own backyard if you could see them. They're also incredibly hardy and seem to survive just about any condition. You can freeze them, boil them, deny them food and water for at least a decade.....and they'll still live. If conditions are not favorable, the tardigrade will simply go into a dormant stage, and they can stay there for years and years. When conditions improve, the tardigrade will "come back to life" in a zombie-ish kind of way.
NASA is quite familiar with these tiny creatures, and interested in their sturdiness as well. In fact, they were aboard the STS-134, which was the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavor. Due to their incredible survival abilities, scientists wanted to know how tardigrades fared in space. Not only did they live through that, but upon their return to earth, they laid healthy eggs and carried on normally.
Science Friday has a terrific clip about tardigrades, which you can see here:
Fascinating, aren't they? I have such respect for these little invertebrates.
If you all haven't had the chance to see it, I recommend you check out this site: http://lookslikescience.tumblr.com/. Its a blog that features pictures of what scientists really look like...and the fact that most of us are not the stereotyped "old, balding white-guy in a white lab-coat" image that most people conjecture when you say "scientist". There are some great photos of people who work in museums too, including this one:
And then there are just fun ones:
I submitted a photo of myself for the project too; if you're a scientist, you should apply and help us keep the movement going to show science is fun, varied, and something anyone can do if they love it :)
Next month is my 30th Birthday. When I was a little kid I used to imagine what I would be doing I as a 30 year-old in the far, distant future (it sure doesn't seem that long now!), and even then I would have told you that I wanted to be a scientist. I knew that I loved biology, doing research and investigating stuff. Only until college did I learn that studying insects (entomology) was even a real field, thanks to my neighbors in Virginia that moved in around high school. Both are entomologists, and steered me to volunteering at the Smithsonian during my summer breaks to see if I liked working with bugs and working in a museum. I was hooked...I got to work on something I liked, and got to be the cool scientist I hoped to be!
Why did working at a museum have such an affinity? Well, because it was such a mystery to know what goes on behind the scenes: the land of Scientists. And not just regular Scientists, but Field Scientists. The likes of Indiana Jones! Except for the archeology part...I wasn't so interested in that.
The character played by Harrison Ford was always a likeable character to me: the academic on one-side who wears the stuffy teaching gear, bow-tie, and could put any colleague to shame with his depth of knowledge. Yet, he was also a field expert who could go out into the jungle, transverse dozens of cultures with ease and the occasional tuxedo swap, and obtain his prize in the end. An appealing dichotomy that never really fits in the regular world, but thrives in the land of academic research and acquisition of invaluable data for future generations ("it belongs in a museum!"). That is what I wanted to be...a girl version of Indiana Jones hunting down exotic bugs in cool places, then getting to work on them and deposit them in museums for future research and record.
One of my favorite scenes: what its like to return back to the museum after field-work! He just needs a bug-themed bow-tie. Plus the water-heater room being his office and collection room: very accurate!
Okay, so what does this have to do with invertebrates and the SNOMNH? Because if you have a kid that has dreams of being a scientist, loves to be outside and being a part of research, they too can grow up to be their own Indiana Jones of their chosen field. Its not the easiest of paths, that's for sure (I only got out of school last year with my last degree...at 29!). Perhaps that is why its okay that Harrison Ford was cast for the role in his mid 30's-40's...that's about when most of us hit our research/academic stride. But it CAN happen, and if you encourage yourself or your children to follow that dream, you'll be one step closer.
Climbing up a mountainside in Costa Rica looking for bugs and frogs
Doing fieldwork in Australia...no arrows, gun slinging or mining roller-coasters! Just lots of netting, sunburns, and an interesting experience driving with the British system.
So, what does it take? In honor of my year turning big 3-0, I offer my 3 suggestions for how I became my own personal "Invertebrate Indiana"
1.) Find your passion, and foster it. Its a bit of a joke that for entomologists you're either born "knowing" or you come to it later, but I'd actually say that the majority of us who are in the field had a passion for insects at a very young age. And most of us will tell you that the reason we're still doing it is partly because our parents supported and fostered that passion. My parents let me do anything I wanted related to insects (except maybe bringing them into the house), and I never heard "eww, that's gross...whats wrong with you?". In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana even knew as a kid he wanted to be an archeologist. And his father (partly because he was one himself) helped foster it, albeit a bit distantly and forcing him to learn Greek!
2.) Find a mentor. As I mentioned previously, I would have NEVER known that entomology was ever a field until my entomologists neighbors pointed it out to me. Most of us won't have neighbors in the field, but there are lots of opportunities to volunteer: at nearby schools, museums, businesses, you name it. The best way to find a mentor is to look, then ask: What is it like doing your job? How did you get to where you are today? Do you have any suggestions? In today's information age, finding a mentor is getting easier than ever. Plus, the worst thing that can happen is that by emailing them or calling they won't respond, which isn't a big deal. Indiana had Dr. Abner when at the University of Chicago, I had the Alonsos and Dr. Henry!
3.) VOLUNTEER. The best way to see what its really like to be a scientist and work in museums is to volunteer for one. My last year of high school I emailed the Smithsonian Entomology department offering my services as a volunteer, and was immediately signed up. Very few people turn down free help. Further, it helps you meet the people that will help you refine your skills or interests, and eventually will become your colleagues if you do stick with it. That is where I got my first taste of field-work, collecting, and doing research projects.
So, get out there and get to it...your inner kid will thank you, even when you are crossing the age-line of "definitely-no-longer-a-kiddo-and-should-move-on-from-Indiana-Jones-much-like-the-directors-from-Indiana-Jones-4"! Have a good one everyone!
