Life Without a Backbone

by Rob Cooper

It is a strange turn of phrase common today that having no backbone implies weakness and lack of stoicism. Whilst many of our most impressive contemporary animal species do have well developed backbones there are many critically important animals that lack such a feature. In this article I will attempt to illustrate and expose the diversity and nature of several extinct and extant species lacking said backbone and try to show why they should certainly glean more attention than they have until now.

1. The Colossal Squid 

A wonderfully accurately named animal, the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate that has ever lived stretching to 14 meters and weighing up to half a tonne. Like all squid the colossal squid is equipped with arms and tentacles covered in suckers, but in contrast to the slightly smaller giant squid, this giant also has sharp hooks for catching large fish and bioluminescent squid species up to 1km below the waves. Once they are fully grown they are only predated regularly by sleeper sharks and sperm whales and still manage to give both predators nasty wounds with their hooks and suckers.

2. The Japanese Spider Crab
The largest member of the arthropod phylum (which includes: insects, arachnids and crustaceans) the Japanese spider crab can have a leg span of up to 3.8 metres and despite it’s rather fearsome appearance it is reported to have a rather gentle disposition. The crab acts as an omnivorous scavenger on the sea floor and like many crustaceans has very small planktonic larvae with transparent bodies and no arms or legs that floats in the water column.

3. The Japanese hornet
Sticking with the Japanese theme we move to a rather less benevolent creature; the Japanese hornet. The sting of the hornet reportedly induces the feeling of your flesh melting and releases a pheromone cocktail that attracts all the hornets in the local area. This pheromone is also used by hornets hunting bees. European bees, which have no defence against the hornets, are often slaughtered by the hive. Japanese bees however have learned to surround the hornet with their bodies and essentially cook the animal with their body heat. 

4. The bullet Ant
If the Japanese hornet wasn’t quite enough to freak you out I invite you to check out the infamous bullet ant. Why is it called the bullet ant? Well the sting of the bullet ant is, according to the schmitd sting pain index, the most painful of all stings and feels akin to being shot. Or if you prefer a slightly more vivid description… The sting is described as ‘waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours’. This potent sting is thought to have evolved as a defence against predators that unearth the ant.

5. Anomalocaris
Delving back over 500 million years into the deep past a rather remarkable arthropod called Anomalocaris or ‘abnormal shrimp’ led the way in the evolution of large multicellular predators that would change the evolution of all future life. Anomalocaris was a truly gigantic animal in its time reaching two metres in length and probably preying on soft bodied organisms. The eyes of Anomalocaris like other ancient and modern arthropods were compound eyes and consisted of 16,000 lenses which represents some of the earliest evolved complex eyes able to tell friend from foe and discern environmental factors, which is clearly an incredibly important evolutionary step.

6. Arthropleura
The past often presents us with monolithic, giant versions of creatures we know today. Such is the case with Arthropleura, an ancient relative of millipedes and centipedes that stretched up to 2.6 metres in length and lived in the carboniferous period over 300 million years ago. The carboniferous period was characterised by huge amounts of vegetation and photosynthesis leading to a very high partial pressure of oxygen allowing arthropods such as Arthropleura to grow so large and is also responsible for many of earths current coal deposits hence the nomenclature of the period.

7. The Crown of Thorns 
Skipping forwards 300 million years in time, large invertebrates are still vitally important ecological factors. There is no better example than the mesmerizing crown of thorns star fish, so named for the hundreds of poisonous spines that covers its aboral (opposite to the oral, mouth containing, surface) surface. The crown of thorns feeds on coral polyps and can cause great damage to reefs if they gather en masse. However ecology is rarely so black and white. The crown of thorns provides a vital role in maintaining reef biodiversity by feeding on rapidly growing corals allowing slower growing corals to grow out and allow variance in reef composition. 

8. The Horse Conch
Fearsome snail is a term rarely used. However it is a term that perfectly describes the horse conch. A huge sea snail that lives of the coast of Florida in shallow waters up to 6 metres deep, the horse conch has made a name for itself by feeding on all manner of marine gastropods and arthropods. The horse conch has even been observed cannibalising younger members of the same species. The bright orange flesh of the animal is very striking and is perhaps a reminder of the incredibly diverse forms that even seemingly mundane animals such as snail have and do take.

9. Jaekelopterus
Sea scorpions such as Jaekelopterus were formidable ocean going predators from 460 to 248 million years ago. Jaekelopterus was discovered from a single 46cm long claw by Simon Braddy and Markus Poschmann of Bristol University in 2007. The full animal is estimated at 2.5 metres in length. Whilst not true scorpions, the sea scorpions were some of the largest arthropods that have ever existed and had the common feature of two large claws presumably used to catch prey such as trilobites that shared their primordial seas.

10. The Hagfish

The hagfish is a living fossil; that is a species that has existed relatively unchanged for a very long time period. The hagfish represents a period in evolutionary history just after the vertebrate skull had evolved but before the backbone had become prominent. The hagfish has a cartilaginous skeleton meaning it can literally tie itself in knots, and indeed does in order to provide enough force to tear chucks of flesh of whale carcasses that sink to the deep sea where it lives. The hagfish can produce huge amounts of slime on contact which increases in volume when exposed to water. This slime could be argued to be the most successful predatory fish repellent ever evolved as it clogs the gills of attacking fish preventing them from ‘breathing’. This is evidenced in how almost all known predators of hagfish are birds or mammals.

I hope I’ve demonstrated here that while many of vertebrates we see around us are certainly fascinating and incredibly important, aesthetically, ecologically and commercially, the invertebrates and strange missing links like the hagfish are not only crucially important to the working of our natural world but just as intriguing, beautiful and in some cases even terrifying, despite their disadvantage in size and complexity. 

Weird and Wonderful: Pelican Spiders!

Scared of spiders? Well these tiny arachnids may only be a couple of millimetres in length but they have large jewel-like venom filled fangs which they use to stab their prey at such a fast speed that the victim is often left impaled. Fortunately these spiders are only found in Australia, Madagascar and South Africa and prey upon mainly small insects and spiders. They are often referred to as Pelican spiders due to their bizarre shape, which from certain angles can resemble that of the Pelican bird. A long elongated neck with a small rounded head on top, designed to support their long jaws.

These spiders tend not to build webs but creep through leaves and foliage where they can easily search out their prey. These spiders us their six hind limbs for walking and use their front two limbs to detect prey. Pelican spiders often seek out the silk trail of other spider species and tend to wait at the edge of a spider’s web until it can catch it. They will often trick the prey spider by plucking at the web so that the spider heads that way in search of its own prey. The Pelican spiders wait very patiently but attack with such speed that they are often referred to as the assassins of the spider world.

Check out this animation of the pelican spider's attack strategy 



*Photo by Paul Bertner

HAARP: Weather Weapon or a Load of Hot Air?

by James Ormiston 

The HAARP Hype
A month-or-so ago the internet was abuzz with debates, videos and general head scratching concerning snow in America that apparently does not melt. Youtube quickly filled with videos of people taking lighters and blowtorches to samples of this so-called “plastic snow”, with all manner of theories attempting to explain the phenomenon. In the end the actual explanation was a simple misunderstanding of the properties of snow and how people were trying to melt it, but this did not stop one of the most vocal communities on the internet voicing their own interpretation of the situation: conspiracy theorists. The usual claims were made: that the snow was made by the government through chemtrails, that the snow contained chemicals and mind control agents to suppress the population and so on. One of the theories concerned a scientific facility which in the past few years has been blamed for almost every major climatic and seismic disaster on the planet. The facility in question is HAARP, an atmospheric research station in Alaska. According to many conspiracy theorists, the American government is using it as a “weather weapon”, capable of manipulating the weather and triggering earthquakes to harm people and countries that disagree with them.

"A "sky-punch" cloud, one of many rare but relatively well understood atmospheric phenomena often misidentified as being caused by HAARP."

There are entire YouTube channels devoted to documenting HAARP’s alleged effects and almost all of them involve abnormal clouds, lights in the sky and general out-of-the-ordinary atmospheric occurrences. It is worth noting, however, that practically none of the followers of the HAARP conspiracy are climate scientists. So why do people believe that HAARP is the cause of the world’s current climatic woes as opposed to something like climate change? One major reason that people distrust the work done at the HAARP facility is that it was built for atmospheric manipulation. This is true; the entire project was designed specifically for just that, but not at all in a way that would affect the weather...

The Numbers of HAARP
Let’s go through the facts of what HAARP actually is. HAARP stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It is a scientific research facility based in a remote region of Alaska easily accessed on the Tok Highway. The facility consists of a 30 acre radio antenna array with a maximum transmission power of 3600 kilowatts at frequencies of 2.3-10 kilohertz. The facility is used by several major American universities. Its purpose is relatively simple: to stimulate and heat small portions of the ionosphere to investigate how it affects, among other things, radio communication.

HAARP radio antenna array

The array transmits a high frequency signal directly upwards over the facility which fans out as it travels higher through the air, passing straight through lower layers of the atmosphere without effect. Some of the signal is absorbed by the ionosphere whilst some is reflected back to Earth or continues into space. The signal absorbed by the ionosphere has an intensity of 3 microwatts per cm2. To put this value into perspective, the Sun constantly bombards Earth with electromagnetic radiation thousands of times greater. In fact, the intensity of HAARP’s transmission is hundreds of times weaker than the variations in UV input from the Sun that forms the ionosphere in the first place. 

One of HAARP’s major achievements was the production of very small artificial aurorae (the same atmospheric phenomenon as the Northern Lights) using this method. The aurorae produced were so weak however that the human eye would not detect them and so the facility relies on highly sensitive electronic monitoring equipment to analyse experiments, hence its remote location away from populated areas plagued with electric noise. 

Man-made HAARP aurora

HAARP only stimulates the ionosphere, not the troposphere (where our weather occurs), and thus has a negligible, if any, effect on the climate as the distance and differences in composition between these atmospheric layers are too great. Even in the ionosphere, HAARP is not powerful enough to do anything significant. The fact that natural aurorae can be seen with the naked eye whilst weak HAARP aurorae cannot be detected without electrical instruments is evidence for this without needing to consult atmospheric physics literature. If stimulating the ionosphere in such a manner resulted in dramatic weather changes, the vast solar/extra-terrestrial input of energy experienced every day would cause constant cataclysmic weather events. The “science” behind HAARP’s supposed abilities just doesn't add up.

Earth-shattering Claims
The story doesn’t end there though. Further claims blamed HAARP for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 as well as the Boxing Day tsunami the decade before. This claim is more outlandish than suggesting HAARP affects the weather as earthquakes are said to be triggered this way by “heating moisture in the atmosphere like a microwave”. Firstly, there is no correlation between atmospheric temperature and seismic disturbance. Secondly, supposed evidence of HAARP being to blame includes the fact that increased background radioactivity is observed before and after earthquakes. The problem with this is that electromagnetic radiation and radioactive decay are two quite different things. HAARP uses radio waves, which are electromagnetic, whilst radioactivity is derived from decay of radioactive isotopes of elements in the Earth’s interior, which is released when rocks in the Earth’s crust are bent and broken during seismic events.

The Politics
So what can conspiracy theorists say to suggest HAARP is genuinely suspicious? Well, HAARP conspiracy theorists often cite the investors behind the project as evidence. The two major investors were DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company). As a defence agency, anything funded by DARPA is treated by some as suspicious, and HAARP was no exception. ARCO was a major American gas company and employment source in Alaska at the time, looking to invest in HAARP so they could sell the gas needed to power the project’s arrays. Dr Bernard Eustland, a renowned physicist, was even employed by APTI, a specially set up subdivision of ARCO, to gain backing. Overall, it was a clever business move. DARPA’s interest was solely in the potential for improving military communication with HAARP’s radio wave research. This is why no patents were filed for the use of the facility as a weapon: because it is incapable of such functions. 

The Disappointing Truth
Regardless of the politics behind HAARP, the biggest criticism to conspiracy theorists is that it simply isn’t capable of meeting their claims. In sum, the “science” just doesn't add up. Adding a tiny drop to the ocean of energy in the ionosphere on one side of the world cannot cause earthquakes and typhoons with GPS-level precision on the other. As put by computer scientist David Naiditch: "(HAARP is) a magnet for conspiracy theorists...its purpose seems deeply mysterious to the scientifically uninformed.” Even if the rumours about HAARP were true, the so-called “plastic snow” observed in America can’t be the result of its weather modification for one important reason…the facility was officially shut down last year!

Royal Society Wikipedia Editathon Celebrates Diversity in Science

by Julie Lee

On the 4th of March, I attended an event known as an ‘editathon’. This particular event gathered women in order to encourage them to contribute to Wikipedia. It was hosted by The Royal Society in London, in advance of International Women’s Day (today - 8th March). Among other reasons, the editathon was organised to increase the quality and quantity of articles on female scientists on Wikipedia. In addition, the event hoped to encourage women to be longer-term editors of Wikipedia.

The editathon took place over half a day, with an afternoon and an evening session. In the afternoon, Dame Athene Donald, fellow of the Royal Society and professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, provided a thought-provoking talk on diversity in science. In all other respects it was identical to the evening session, which I attended.

The event was led by John Byrne, Royal Society Wikimedian-in-residence, former Treasurer and trustee of Wikimedia UK, and 2012 ‘UK Wikimedian of the year’. Byrne gave a presentation introducing himself, Wikipedia, and good practice when editing. Additionally, his talk highlighted some problems in Wikipedia which the editathon endeavoured to fix - namely, the lack of female editors in Wikipedia (reports estimate about 9%) and the lack of quality articles on female scientists. These problems are likely linked and, further, contribute to the low public profile of esteemed female scientists. 

During the event, a group of 15-20 women worked on their laptops to help those problems, while expert Wikipedia editors roamed the room, providing advice as needed. We were encouraged to start our own articles on prominent women scientists - such as those featured by Discover Magazine. A few of us had some Wikipedia experience; however, most attendees were completely new to the game. By the end of the night, we came away with an enriched understanding of Wikipedia, better skills in editing, and a sense of accomplishment. While some critics may claim that the relative infrequency of good Wikipedia articles on female scientists is due to a simple lack of good female scientists, the event certainly challenged that view. The women we wrote about had held various directorial and professorial roles. 

Another problem Byrne described was that, in recent years, the public understanding of Wikipedia as a resource that anyone can edit has diminished. At the end, the event’s Wikipedia page showed several new articles had been made, in the span of only a couple hours. So, the event hopefully illustrated that anyone with a laptop and something to contribute can create meaningful resources for others to explore. In particular, scientists tend to grasp good editing principles right off the bat. I chatted to one of the Wikipedia volunteers, who noted that scientists are usually quick to understand why and when to cite articles - an invaluable part of making Wikipedia credible.

For those Wikipedia sceptics out there: yes, it is really easy to edit Wikipedia. Yes, there sometimes may be inaccuracies. However, Wikipedia is all about crowdsourcing, and within minutes most vandalism disappears. The editors on the wiki work tirelessly, on their own time, to make it great. So, before you criticise Wikipedia, think about how amazing it is that people around the world came together to make a highly-valued resource that print encyclopedias can only dream of. 

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening spent meeting other women and learning about the inner workings of Wikipedia. I would encourage people to visit the Wikipedia event page to examine the fruits of our labour: click here

Lastly, feel free to dive in and do some editing yourself! After all, that is the appeal of Wikipedia. 

Inside story: Dr Elaine Thomas - School of Biochemistry

Interview by Melissa Levy

Dr Elaine Thomas is a lecturer for the school of Biochemistry, as well as a researcher alongside Linda O'Flaherty and Jeremy Tavaré.  The group looks mainly at the regulation of glucose uptake by insulin and protein kinase signalling in lung cancer and glioma. If you want more information about what they do, click here.

Q. Where did you go to university and what did you study?
“I went to the University of Queensland in Australia and I studied a bachelor in science and majored in biochemistry and molecular cell biology… In the first year it was quite broad; I did some basic biology and biochemistry, we did some plant biology and human biology and then it was only in the second year we then started doing the majoring and I did biochemistry. I did my (masters) project on the sorting nexins (work that Pete Cullen in does now in the same department)… that was before anything was known about the sorting nexins…  [And we] developed some main concepts about the human retinol complexes and distribution of those proteins.”

See below for information about sorting nexins!

Q. How did you get from there to working here at Bristol?
“So after my honours I actually worked as a technician in a lab that was interested in insulin signalling and I worked on a protein called RNS1. But at the same time there was a project about a protein called RMPDH which was found to be phosphorylated in response to insulin and was recruited to lipid droplets…I found that really quite interesting! I then went overseas for about a year and a half…did some travelling, worked in a ski resort town - it was essentially a gap year whilst working. I also worked in a research lab in London for a little bit. I did my PhD (back in Australia) on IMPDH in the same lab that I had been in. The project changed focus, as PHD projects usually do, and then I guess during my time there I became interested in insulin signalling and GLUT4 biology. And so I came over here after my PhD and started working on the protein TBC1D1 in Jeremy’s (Professor Jeremy Tavaré) lab. So I’ve been sort of interested in energy homeostasis for a while and I guess of different mechanisms and the regulation of proteins that are involved in these processes.”

Q. How would you describe your typical day as a researcher/lecturer?
**laughing** “Tricky! I do quite a lot of cell culture, so I suppose Monday’s are setting up cells for experiments during the week, then we might have a lab meeting where we discuss what’s going on in the lab, then I have tutorials sort of scattered around during the week …. Might need to do some project solving for my work and also talking with other people in the lab…also analysing data.

Q. Do you like the fact that you are a tutor and lecturer as well as the fact that you do research?
“I do enjoy it! It can be a struggle getting the time management right, but I have enjoyed the lecturing as well as the tutorials because … I find it quite rewarding interacting with the students, and it gives a wider perspective on the work that I’m doing: the lectures that I give are on GLUT4 translocation and so it kind of shows the bigger picture and hopefully makes me a better scientist.”

Q. What advice would you give to someone looking to have a career in science?
"Follow what you enjoy and what you’re good at!"

Q.  If you could do research with one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
(After much deliberation) “I’m torn between some of the people who did the seminal molecular biology projects, Watson and Crick and Mary Curie, versus the people like Matthias Mann you know Mr Proteomics… Probably one of the seminal scientists like Crick!”

Some of the areas of science covered in this interview: 

- Sorting nexins are a large group of proteins that are localized in the cytoplasm and have the potential for membrane association either through their lipid-binding PX domain (a phospholipid-binding motif) or through protein-protein interactions with membrane-associated protein complexes. Some members of this family have been shown to facilitate protein sorting.

- Glucose transporter type 4, also known as GLUT4, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the GLUT4 gene. GLUT4 is the insulin-regulated glucose transporter found primarily in adipose tissues and striated muscle (skeletal and cardiac) that is responsible for insulin-regulated glucose transport into the cell.