Dwarf Hawkfish (Cirrhitichthys falco)
The dwarf hawkfish is able to change sex. Hawkfish live in harems, with one dominant male to several females. If the male is removed, the subdominant female with develop into the new male.
Jan Messersmith on Flickr
Mating Nudibranches (Roboastra luteolineata)SMURF PENISOn a recent dive, we stumbled upon a rather private moment between a couple of simultaneous hermaphrodites, Roboastra luteolineata, doing the mutual penis dance. They were poking around for a while, and had yet to manage mutual fertilization when we (reluctantly) moved on.
Some of you might have found, that after a hundred dives or more, that although you still enjoy reefs, or fish, or the ‘prettiness’ of being underwater, that other aspects of the marine world take your fancy. I have zoomed in on macro life, and relish the challenge of finding tiny critters on a sandy bottom. And for the things that are a bit bigger, behaviour starts to catch your eye…
…who am I kidding? It’s all about the smurf penis.
The spotted-winged fruit bat (Balionycteris maculata) is a species of Pterpodidae inhabiting the rain forests and mangrove forests of Brunei and Malaysia. They are unusually small for their family— commonly called the “Megabats”— at only 5-7cm in length. They are so named for the pale spots on their wings which occur mostly on the finger joints, but do appear on the wing membranes and body, including two spots in front of the eyes and on the ears.
Spotted-wing fruit bats dwell in the understory where they feed on small fruits like figs and persimmon, but will occasionally take small invertebrates. During the day, they roost and forage alone at night. Males will visit their roosting sites several times within a single night, suggesting to scientists that they are territorial over these areas and that prime roosts give them access to more females who will visit multiple males when breeding. Uniquely, these roosting sites are often partially excavated by the bats in old ant and termite mounds, or in the roots of trees.
(Source: eximago)
The telson and uropods of the mantis shrimp, Oratosquilla oratoria (Crustacea: Stomatopoda: Squillidae), from Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan
(photo: Takahashi | Wikimedia Commons) (via: EOL)
Larva-Carrying Ant
Image courtesy Geir Drange, Nikon Small World
Caught in the act of carrying its larva, an ant in the genus Myrmica—found throughout the Northern Hemisphere—is enlarged five times in this ninth-place entry by Geir Drange of Akser, Norway. Ants take their larvae in and out of the nest each day in order to regulate their temperature.
(via: National Geo)
Above top : Cnidaria or Coelenterata is a phylum containing over 10,000 species of animals found exclusively in aquatic and mostly marine environments. Their distinguishing feature is cnidocytes, specialized cells that they use mainly for capturing prey. Their bodies consist of mesoglea, a non-living jelly-like substance, sandwiched between two layers of epithelium that are mostly one cell thick. They have two basic body forms : swimming medusae and sessile polyps, both of which are radially symmetrical with mouths surrounded by tentacles that bear cnidocytes. (wikipedia) (Flickr : Tamra Hays)
Above bottom : Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in nature, most Turritopsis, like other medusae, are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the plankton stage, without reverting to the polyp form. No single specimen has been observed for any extended period, so it is not currently possible to estimate the age of an individual, and so even if this species has the potential for immortality, there is no laboratory evidence of many generations surviving from any individual. (wikipedia) (Flickr : Mito@ / ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.THIS IS NONPROFIT)
auntmaimie asked: siggi?
YO I’M NOT EVEN JOKING THIS IS *THE NUMBER ONE RESULT* WHEN YOU TYPE “SIGGI” INTO GOOGLE IMAGES
Myco-heterotrophy
… a symbiotic relationship between certain kinds of plants (which often lack chlorophyll) and fungi, in which the plant gets all or part of its food from parasitism upon fungi rather than from photosynthesis.
A myco-heterotroph is the parasitic plant partner in this relationship. Myco-heterotrophy is considered a kind of cheating relationship and myco-heterotrophs are sometimes informally referred to as “mycorrhizal cheaters”. This relationship is sometimes referred to as mycotrophy, though this term is also used for plants that engage in mutualistic mycorrhizal relationships…
(read more: Wikipedia)
(images: T - Indian Pipes, Monotropa uniflora, New Hampshire, USA, by Magellan nh; B - Thismia javanica, Thailand, by หนานโตน)
