Discover Top Posts Tagged with #sciblr

This may sound stupid but. How do you even begin to look for new tiny frogs???

#science #glamour #frogs #animals #biology #zoology #sciblr #Anonymous #Answers by Mark #anon #sometimes a picture says a thousand words #I added the glamour tag to give this special treat to anyone following that tag on tumblr dot com #hi and welcome to frogblr

#animals #biology #marine biology #anatomy #bioblr #sciblr #twitter

first of all, through the power of tape anything is possible, so jot that down

#science #physics #sciblr #academia #I go through reams of tape in the lab #cello duct blackout sealing packing foam

UNMASKING THE BLUEBOTTLE REVEALING FOUR DISTINCT SPECIES THROUGH GLOBAL CITIZEN SCIENCE

For over two centuries, the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia spp) was considered a single, cosmopolitan species, drifting across the world’s oceans and stinging unsuspecting swimmers. But new genomic research has overturned this long-held view, revealing that Physalia is not one species, but at least four: P. physalis, P. megalista, P. utriculus, and a newly described species, P. minuta. Researchers sequenced the genomes of 151 specimens from around the globe and found strong reproductive isolation between genetic lineages, even when their distributions overlap. This evidence aligns with historical descriptions from the 18th and 19th centuries, which proposed several species that were later dismissed due to limited data.

Crucially, the study integrated over 4,000 photographs from iNaturalist, using citizen science to match distinct morphologies with genetic lineages. These images, contributed by amateur naturalists, swimmers, and lifeguards, allowed researchers to confirm physical differences that earlier taxonomists could not consistently observe due to preservation challenges. The result is a rare success story in which modern genomics, historical records, and participatory science come together to clarify the taxonomy of one of the ocean’s most recognisable creatures.

The discovery not only rewrites the story of Physalia but also challenges assumptions about biodiversity in the open ocean, reminding us that even the most visible marine life can hold hidden complexity, and that everyone, from sailors of the past to today’s citizen scientists, has a role to play in uncovering it.

Reference: Church et al., 2025. Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveals genetic structure in the open ocean. Current Biology.

#physalia #siphonophore #species #science #sciblr #biology #blue bottle #Portuguese man o’ war

[Source article]

More echinoderm fun facts! Not only are echinoderms’ bodies mostly built using the head regions of bilaterian genetics, but they also have a distributed nervous system that all together acts as an all-body brain!

Excerpt:

With hundreds of different types of neurons, sea urchins express both echinoderm head genes and genes also found in the central nervous system of vertebrates. It used to be thought that echinoderms such as sea urchins, sea stars and sea cucumbers had a primitive nerve net, in which some of the diffuse neurons throughout their bodies may form ganglia that serve them as nerve centers, but not all decentralized nervous systems are created equal. The adult sea urchin nervous system is more like a brain that extends through the entire creature.

“The complexity of the sea urchin nervous system, as characterized by the diversity of postmetamorphic neuronal cell type signatures and their integration of diverse PRC systems, leads us to propose that the sea urchin nervous system in its entirety comprises an ‘all-brain’ rather than a ‘no-brain’ state,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Science Advances.

Echinoderms were previously dismissed as having simple nervous systems, like jellyfish, because they lack a centralized brain, but this assumption was mistaken. Analyzing gene expression in sea urchins further revealed that their most abundant cells are neurons. While the same genes are in charge of generating these neurons, there is a drastic difference between the neurons of larvae and juveniles versus those of adults, though some larval neurons are still present after they metamorphose into juveniles.

#animals #science #nature #sciblr #echinoderm