Can you guess what this thing is? You get two hints: 1. It’s appearing on Reefs.com, and 2. It was taken at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, NY. That’s all I’ll say for now. Place your bets. There’s only one rule: If you have inside information, you can’t play. After all, this isn’t Wall Street!
How specific do we need to get?
You can be as vague as you want, but to win the big prize (my respect), you should at least narrow it down to family.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind winning the big prize :)… However, I may have just a little too much inside information to compete.
Am I aloud to cheat Todd 🙂
Is this part of the long filaments of the Liopropoma you are trying to raise? The buoyancy/yolk sac thing?
That’s what it is, although I think that might count as inside information. Here’s the latest video: http://youtu.be/TocX5wepnTk
I was way off but that is really cool. Any info on the structure and why it looks like that? Besides the buoyancy it looks like it’s meant to lure predators away from the fry or at least give it better odds.
Buoyancy is definitely one important function. Some other hypotheses include: mimicry of a stinging cnidarian tentacle, mimicry of other fish larvae (viewed from the top at advanced stages, the pattern of black pigment makes the sacs look like they have eyes), nutrient storage, nutrient uptake. There’s a lot we don’t know about them. I hope to get some histology work done on them soon.
Does each larvae seem to have the same number of these things?
Is that actually phosphorescent?
Tal, the filaments start out very uniform in size. Then as the sacs develop and they continue to get longer, I start to see a lot of variation, mostly, I believe, because they start to break off. I think if a filament doesn’t get broken, it can reach even more absurd lengths than you see in any of these videos.
Jeff, I haven’t noticed any bioluminescence (I don’t let it get dark enough in the tanks). The brilliance of the spots in the photo is just a result of my flash reflecting off the pigment cells.