What should go on the T-shirt

If I ever make a T-shirt to promote Marmorkrebs.org, I could do worse than the description I found on This Recording blog by Molly Lambert:

The Amazonian crayfish civilization

Love it!

F2!

One of the animals hatched here in the my lab about 7 months ago now has eggs of her own. I can now officially say that there is a breeding colony of Marmorkrebs for research in North America.

For those who think the title of this post is a bit cryptic, this is a reference to standard notation of generations in genetics. The parental generation is considered "P"; their offspring is designated "F₁", which is short for "first filial" generation, and the offspring of the F₁ generation are named "F₂".

In my case, the original animals I received would be the P generation. They gave me eggs of the F₁ generation in late October, and this will be the start of the F₂ generation.

Conference season

Summer is prime time for most research conferences. The always thoughtful Seth Godin has a post on conferences that echo things that have been on my mind for a while.

If oil is $130 a barrel and if security adds two or three hours to a trip and if people are doing more and more business with those far afield...

and if we need to bring together more people from more places when we get together...

and if the alternatives, like video conferencing or threaded online conversations continue to get better and better, then...

I think the standard for a great meeting or a terrific conference has changed.

In other words, "I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be.

What are the online tools available that might take up some of the slack for some conferences? There are several online services. The first I became aware of was GoToMeeting.com, which was specifically marketing itself to scientists.

Lately, I've started messing around a bit with Vyew, which looks promising. They have a comparison chart on their webpage. This is handy because it points to other similar services, such as WebEx, LiveMeeting, and with a bit of tooling around, I also found Acrobat Connect. I'm trying not to turn this into an ad for any particular company, but it does point out the range of services and features available.

I am not convinced yet that these services can take the place of conferences entirely. At big conferences (like the massive Neuroscience meeting, pictured), the opportunity for serendipitous connections is just too large, and probably can't be easily replicated by an online experience. The online experience is also liable to suffer from the fact that because most people are just in their offices, they are less focused, and the event is less memorable than actual travel to a conference. And so much information is exchanged, making things memorable is a good thing.

I will be messing around with these services over the summer, not for a conference, but to work with a student who is out of town. And if that works out... who knows? A small online gathering could work very well for a smallish emerging research community.

Battle in Britain

This is an older article from a UK newspaper about the invasive potential of Marmorkrebs.

At least, I'm 99% sure it's about Marmorkrebs. They quote Gerhard Scholtz and everything. But the writing is surprisingly vague. It doesn't clearly say that these are all female -- it does say "without mating," but I wonder if some people might interpret that as the animal having mated before purchase. The article refers to "marine experts," which is a little odd, since "marine" refers to oceans, and crayfish are freshwater.

It's tempting to say that it's typical of British tabloid journalism -- though I have no idea whether the Daily Mail is a tabloid or not. But look at the prose, to which I've added a little emphasis...

...carries a deadly plague...

...these alien invaders can reproduce in great numbers at great speed without mating...

...an even grimmer future...

...then the next minute her small aquarium was overrun...

...larger and more aggressive than native varieties, giving them a competitive edge in the hunt for food.

Even the "hunt for food" quote gives a misleading impression, suggesting Marmorkrebs are ravenous predators rather then generalists with a preference for vegetables.

I guess I should be glad that people are paying attention to the invasive potential of Marmorkrebs. It is a serious issue.

Marmorkrebs on the road: TCS Summer 2008

I'll be attending the summer meeting of The Crustacean Society in Galveston next month. Unfortunately, I will only be there briefly, and the poster I'm presenting isn't about Marmorkrebs. I hope to talk to a few people about Marmorkrebs research projects during the poster session on the evening of Wednesday, 11 June 2008.

Standard operating procedures, and lack thereof

I was looking for some more information on housing systems for researchers, and came across this interesting article in ALN Magazine about standardizing procedures for aquatic animals. ALN is a magzine for animal research labs. I obviously knew such things existed and were big operations at other institutions, but hadn't really thought that there would be an industry magazine.

Joe Sillitti writes:

Given how important the aquatic models, such as zebrafish and frogs have become, and how much emphasis is being placed on the use of these models, it is a wonder how husbandry standards have not yet been set. In the aquatic research field, even basic principles such as water quality, feeding, and breeding have not been standardized.

I am as guilty of this as anyone. My strategy so far has really been to try to intervene in the crayfish tanks as little as possible, because the animals have been molting, feeding, and reproducing. I hope to start getting serious about this as I move from an ad hoc system of pet tanks to a more standardized series of research tanks in the near future. I'll try to share what I learn here.

Speaking of animal housing, Pharmacal looks like another supplier worth talking to in regards to developing aquatic housing for Marmorkrebs research colonies. They've got systems for Xenopus (pictured) and zebrafish. I don't like the name of their system, which they call PharmHouse™ Aquatic System. To me, the name manages to bring to mind the bad connotations of both big pharma and agribusiness. But I can live with the name if their systems work.

Who's talking about Marmorkrebs

It's amazing what you can learn just by using a new search engine.

I was trying out the interesting new search engine Addictomatic, and naturally, typed in "Marmorkrebs." I'll have more posts on what I found later, but I thought I would start with this little YouTube gem...