New species of Octopus found in record depth

The NOAA expedition project is a three year long project which started in 2015. It’s aim is to carry out a couple of expeditions in the deep waters near Hawaii for finding out more wildlife in this part of the world. (further information: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1603/background/plan/welcome.html)

What is interesting about this deep waters in Hawaii is that they keep a huge ecosystem in a really unusual depth. It appears twice as deep as the ones that were considered the deepest "big ecosystems" until a couple of years. This ecosystem is founded at 4000m of depth, and during the eight previous dives that the team has performed this last months they have been able to contribute with a lot of information to scientists about life habits of rare species that science didn't know a lot about.

It was only matter of time that a new species were discovered and this has been the case. A new type of “ghost” octopus species found at 4290m deep in the seas surrounding Hawaii, which you can see in the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWHvekDCAo4

Animals which sense the magnetic field

Animals like pigeons, lobsters, moles, even fruit flies can use the magnetic field for orientating themselves in the globe. This has been known since a couple of decades, but why do we know so little about it even if there’s loads of experiments and research going on with this topic? 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2080998-animal-superpowers-how-were-homing-in-on-their-magnetic-satnav/

I was reading an article on the new scientist about this and I found it really interesting. Basically, even there are a lot of animals with some kind of ability for feeling the magnetic field, none of them show a real organ or region in their body that is designed for this. As the article says “There is no nose or ear for feeling the magnetic field that we can appreciate”, and also, if this different “organ” even exist, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same place for all animals which sense the magnetic field.

Lately one of the substances that has been studied is Cryptochrome, a type of protein found in the eyes of some animals. It produces radicals (A type of chemical compound) depending on the magnetic field, and it’s used by fruit flies for sensing the magnetic field, for example. For proving that this substance had something to do with magnetic orientation, a team of scientists from the University of Oxford genetically modified a group of fruit flies cutting down the gene which produced this substance. This engineered flies that didn’t present Cryptochrome, weren’t able to orientate using the magnetic field. Unfortunately, we cannot say that all animals which sense the magnetic changes base that perception on this substance, because humans also contain Cryptochrome and we don’t sense the magnetic field. 

Animals with the ability to feel the magnetic field are still a mystery for us, so there’s still a lot of research to be done in this topic, but if we get to find what is the real root of all this, It could have great benefits for us.

My Own Mesocosm!

A Mesocosm is an experiment carried out for studying the development of nature under controlled conditions. It is really useful for testing the changes that organism will undergo under certain circumstances.

Last week in Biology we created our own mesocosm. It was simple, we picked up a bottle, added some small rocks, some sand, some compost, some water and the plant that we wanted to. I chose to put germinating peas into it. Then we sealed the bottle with some tape. As we studied in Photosynthesis, the plants would get Water, CO2 and sunlight to form glucose, creating Oxygen and water vapour as byproducts. Then, the bacteria from the compost would use the oxygen and produce CO2, which will be used by the plants, completing then the cycle. Then, even if the small ecosystem was isolated, it should be able to survive. The only element that should be getting in and out would be energy in the form of sunlight getting into the bottle and kinetic energy in form of 

heat.   

In theory this works, but in practice this is not so simple. The plants could die due to many reasons: Too much water, not enough CO2, not enough compost and therefore bacteria for producing oxygen… Etc. So I wasn’t really sure if my plants were going to survive.

I have to say I got really excited when one of the germinating peas started to root. That was three days ago, now a couple of germinating peas have already grown up. It may seem like a kind of childish experiment but if you think about it’s really interesting and it has so many applications. Now everyday the first thing I do in the mornings is check how my plants are, even knowing that I wouldn't be able to do anything about it because is completely sealed, but still it makes me feel really excited.