Liriodendron tulipifera: a good place for snails

One of the most common and easily identifiable trees in the forests of the northeast U.S. is the tulip poplar (also called yellow poplar or tulip tree), thanks to the characteristic shape of its leaves. In late spring, the equally unique, large flowers of the tree can often be seen on the ground, especially after rain storms when the flowers and small branches are easily broken off.


Liriodendron tulipifera is neither a tulip nor a poplar, but a member of the magnolia family (Magnoliaceae). According to my tree book (C.F. Brockman, Trees of North America, 1968), the range of the tulip poplar extends from northern Florida to southern Canada. Tulip poplar trees can grow quite large. Here is a picture of me next to an enormous one at Belt Woods.

What makes this tree a favorite of mine is their tendency to develop large cavities at the bases of their trunks. The rotting wood that eventually develops inside the cavity provides food and the cavity itself provides shelter for land snails. Consequently, the soil from such cavities usually yields many specimens.

Cat food is not just for cats

The past 2 mornings and evenings I have been seeing these slugs (Limax maximus) feasting on the bits and pieces left in the otherwise empty cans of cat food in the recycling bin that we keep outside our front door. And they were not the only ones in the can; one isopod is also in the picture.

If I can fatten up the resident Limax maximus on this high protein diet, perhaps they will perform more of their aerial matings this summer.

2 noteworthy incidents from this afternoon's trike ride

While riding my Greenspeed Anura:

1. A chipmunk appeared on the sidewalk in front of me and then just sat there on its hind legs staring at me as I was approaching it fast. It probably had no idea what it was that was coming towards it. I had to swerve to one side to avoid hitting it just when it finally decided to dash away in the same direction. Luckily, it was faster.

2. 2 small dogs charged at me whilst barking furiously. Being at the bottom of a hill, I was going rather fast and they were headed straight towards the front tire. At the last moment they decided it wasn't such a good idea to splatter their puny brains all over me.

Note to self: Chipmunks are unpredictable; small dogs are nuts.

Does Jesus love extraterrestrial aliens?

According to today’s news reports (Reuters), the Vatican’s chief astronomer Jose Gabriel Funes said in an interview that "Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God...There could be (other beings) who remained in full friendship with their creator."

Considering the fact that here on our small earth there are so many "true" religions worshiping one or more gods, I would think that each planet that harbored life forms as intelligent as Homo sapiens would also be likely to have a multitude of belief systems.

If extraterrestrials vastly more intelligent and advanced than us landed on earth tomorrow and revealed to us that their religion, if they had one, was also vastly different from ours, would Father Funes consider giving up Catholicism and converting to their religion? If not, how would he explain that presumably the same god who he thinks also created the extraterrestrials gave them a different religion?

If something like that happened, could the earth-bound "true" believers continue to maintain, with a straight face, that only the particular religion that they had been most likely brain-washed into by their parents, was still the only "true" religion and that the extraterrestrials were in fact infidel heretics perhaps deserving to be burned at the stake?

It gets sillier and sillier everyday.

Where do the old questions about dead birds go?

A while ago in this post, I and several commenters offered answers to the question, Where do all the dead birds go? The same question has now returned from the grave and is the subject of a recent post at the Bird Ecology Study Group.

I started reading the BESG blog a couple of months ago and it has since become one of my favorite blogs. I am not a birder and I get bored from looking at the seemingly endless species lists or just pictures of birds that I often see on few other primarily birding blogs that I regularly read. In contrast, almost all posts at the BESG blog have something to do with an interesting bird behavior and are accompanied with good, original pictures. I find them quite informative.

We need to have more blogs like that not just about birds, but about all other animal groups.

Dissection of Truncatella caribaeensis - Part 2

Yesterday's post was about the removal of the shell of a Truncatella caribaeensis specimen in preparation for dissection. The subsequent dissection went well and I was able to see what I wanted to see.

Here is the dissected snail after the mantle was cut open and moved aside.

The white, folded organ labeled "penis" is, well, the penis of the snail. It is about a half of the spiraled body length of the snail (talk about penis enlargement).

What interested me more was the row of tiny white flaps to the left of the penis. They constitute the ctenidium or the gill of Truncatella caribaeensis. Here is a larger view.


This snail spends its entire life cycle on land very close to the sea, but out of it, unless it is carried away by the waves or the tides, and because of that it is considered a land snail. But it still, as we see here, retains the gill of its aquatic ancestors from whom it evolved. On the other hand, there are other species of snails that live on land alongside Truncatella, for example, Melampus bullaoides, that lost their gills a long time ago and obtain their oxygen thru their vascularized mantle, or "lung." But they nevertheless return to the sea to reproduce, because they still have planktonic larvae as did their ancestors.

Evolution works in mysterious ways.

Dissection of Truncatella caribaeensis - Part 1

This is the 1st time I am dissecting a Truncatella specimen. In fact, this is the 1st time I am dissecting a non-pulmonate snail. Perhaps, I should have started off with a bigger species, but I need to learn about the anatomy of Truncatella for a research project and I don't want to waste time dissecting specimens that are not of interest now.

Preserved specimen of Truncatella caribaeensis. The arrow points at the operculum.
The shell of this particular specimen of Truncatella caribaeensis was about 6 mm long. Since it is difficult to break apart the shells of such small snails without damaging the tissues inside, they are best eliminated by dissolving them in dilute acid. The carbon dioxide bubbles generated from the reaction of the shell material with hydrochloric acid proves that the shell is indeed made of calcium carbonate, in case there was any doubt about it.


Here is the snail's body left behind after almost all the shell dissolved away. The arrow labeled m is pointing at one of the defining organs of the phylum Mollusca, the mantle (occasionally also referred to as the pallium). The snail's body is protruding from the mantle cavity, the space below the mantle. This proves that T. caribaeensis is indeed a mollusk, in case there was any doubt about it.


m: mantle, t: tentacle; s: snout; f: foot. The scale is in millimeters.
Now I will start the actual dissection. If I don't botch it, I will write about it in a future post.

A genuine pain in the ass: proctalgia fugax

I was awakened this morning around 4:30 by a mild case of proctalgia fugax, a type of rectal pain that usually strikes at nite during sleep. Its causes are unknown (if other medical conditions are ruled out) and there is no treatment for it. Luckily, I get them very infrequently, once a year, maybe.

Last nite's episode was, fortunately, a mild one; the pain was of a dull, aching type. However, it was uncomfortable enough to prevent me from going back to sleep and I got up. I walked around the bedroom, went downstairs and came back up, did some stretching and squatting. I figure that if the pain comes when I am in bed, then getting up and moving around should help ease it. The pain did lessen rather quickly. I went back to bed and was able to fall asleep again until about 7:30 when Marissa Cat woke me up. It was way pass her breakfast time.

She will be there again tomorrow morning, but hopefully, proctalgia fugax won't return for a long time.