Invertebrate

In Sub- Sahara Africa, malaria has killed four million citizens, and the number of cases have quadrupled since 1980. Unfortunately, Sub-Saharan countries can’t afford medication because it has a low economic growth rate. Since DDT is a very cheap and effective insecticide, governments in Sub- Sahara Africa use it to prevent malaria outbreaks. Even though DDT is cheap, it should not be used because it causes more harm than benefits: it has harmful chemicals that destroy the environment and kill…

Turbellaria, Polychladida, Eurylephidae, Maritigrella, and Crozieri. Tiger Flatworms live in Saltwater. The areas they typically inhabit are the islands around the Caribbean and the Bermuda. These flatworms feed on orange tunicates, a sessile marine invertebrate that has a saclike body enclosed in a thick membrane or “tunic”. They eat these exclusively, meaning that they do not eat anything else in the world except for orange tunicates. Because these animals are sessile, the Tiger Flatworm has…

We hypothesized that higher levels of serotonin will have an effect on the crayfish aggression. Our data does not support our hypothesis as there is no significant difference in the aggression scores of the crayfish before the drug treatment (naïve fight) and after (drugged fight). While analyzing the data, we found the presence of winner and loser effect. Other factor such as sex may have influenced our results. However, a t- test revealed that there is no significant impact of sex on the…

central nervous systems, bone structure, and the gastrointestinal tract of mammals. Chemicals from the paint spread into the surrounding seawater and accumulate in sediments around harbors and along shipping lanes. This is then ingested by marine invertebrates and gets into the food chain (Earth Crash, 1998). Tributyltin gradually erodes, releasing an organic tin compound. Toxic tin residues have accumulated to alarming levels in the sediments of areas with heavy boat traffic, concentrated…

The Cook Islands is a Polynesian country comprising 15 small islands with a total land area of 240 km2 (Table 1), located in the South Pacific Ocean, but its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers an ocean area of 1.8 million km2. The country of the Cook Islands consists of two main groups, one in the north and one in the south. The southern group is nine elevated islands mainly of volcanic origin although some are virtually atolls. The majority of the population lives in the southern group (Fig.…

They are able to eat their prey whole. They eat copepods, isopods, bristle worms, and amphipods. Most of their food if located around ocean venting systems. It’s usually found floating in ocean currents. Everything that they eat are pelagic invertebrates that also swim just above the sea floor. They are the deepest living octopus. 9,800-13,000 ft. is where they are known to hover, they may be even deeper than that. They are worldwide, but mainly found in New Zealand, Australia, Monterey Bay,…

Introduction According to Yamamoto and Vernier (2011), dopamine is without a doubt one of the oldest neurotransmitters acting on the central nervous system. The researchers suggest that the emergence of dopaminergic systems most likely predates the divergence of chordates during evolution, and the neurotransmitter’s common ancestry is suggested by commonalities among different species that express the same enzymes, vesicle transporters, degradation enzymes, and receptors. Since dopamine is a…

Hummingbirds What are hummingbirds? Hummingbirds are birds from the Americas that make up the family of Trochilidae. Trochilidae is the scientific name for these birds and are among the smallest of birds with lifespan of three to five years. Hummingbirds are also very colorful birds with iridescent feathers. The colors they have are blue, green, yellow, and pink. The name ‘hummingbird’ comes from the fact that their wings flap so fast, that it makes a humming noise. These magnificent birds…

Drug discovery represents one of the most promising and highly visible outcomes of marine biotechnology research (Mishra, 2007).Bio-chemicals produced by marine invertebrates, algae and bacteria are very different than those from related terrestrial organisms and thus offer great potential as new classes of medicines. To date, examples of marine-derived drugs include an antibiotic from fungi, two closely related compounds from a sponge that treat cancer and the herpes virus, and a neurotoxin…

When was the last time you went to your local Zoo to see an animal in the wild? If you are like most people, it might have been when you were a child in grade school, or with your children or grandchildren in grade school. On the other hand, was it to see a new exhibit with a Lion or Tiger or even the Pandas from China? With the invention of television and social media, are Zoos a necessity? In the essay “Animal and Ethics”, written by Scott D. Wilson, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at…