Ian Hutton doing research at Mt Glover on Lord Howe Island (credit Ian Hutton).
A young university graduate’s chance posting to Lord Howe Island has taken Ian Hutton OAM on a lifetime’s wondrous ecological adventure that Southern Cross University is set to recognise with an Honorary Doctorate.
Mr Hutton will be conferred the award of Honorary Doctor in Natural and Physical Sciences during graduation ceremonies at the Coffs Harbour campus on Saturday June 26.
Mr Hutton moved to Lord Howe Island from Sydney in 1980 as a Bureau of Meteorology weather observer for a two-year posting – but never left.
“Living on Lord Howe Island is like living inside a David Attenborough documentary,” Mr Hutton said of the World Heritage Listed location about 700 km northeast of Sydney.
‘Blue Dragon’ Sea Slugs May Look Pretty but Deliver Potent Sting Because of What They Eat
The fantastically named “blue dragon” is an ocean dwelling animal which looks as impressive as it sounds. They are in fact a type of sea slug (nudibranch), but these flashy slugs boast an incredible defense mechanism that sets them apart from their garden-variety cousins.
The blue dragon Glaucus atlanticus has been known to scientists for over 300 years. Often ending up in rocky pools between high tides, their beauty belies a fearsome weapon.
To avoid predators, this sea slug ingests the stinging cells of a Portuguese man o’ war (or bluebottle), and cleverly transfers the sting to the tips of its cerata, its wing-like appendages on the sides of its body.
Bird Song of the Day
26 minutes (!) of a Snow Oil foraging and feeding its young. Impressive dedication.
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added these daily charts from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site. I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching…. (A reader asked the source of the data: Johns Hopkins CSSE. DIVOC-91 does allow other data sets to be used, like Our World in Data and The Atlantic, and where they provide visualizations similar to those below, a cursory comparison shows that the shape of the curves is the same.)
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With the use of sea slugs in Australia, researchers can get a better understanding of the change in climate. Since 2013, a citizen science program Sea Slug Census charged by volunteers has recorded along the Australian coast observations of these gastropods.
Southern Cross University in New South Wales was organized by Professor Steve Smith.This observations has taken place for more than 40 censuses. Dr. Smith explained that they had to run different sea slug census creating plans to improve new areas.
(Photo : Pixabay)
Colorful Molluscs
A group of striking and colorful molluscs named Nudibranchs has been remarkably helpful in understanding the effects of global warming. The reason is that these molluscs generally have a life span of less than a year, which suggests they react more rapidly to shifts in their environmental conditions.
Australia isn’t the only place using sea slugs to learn more about climate change.
A particular species, the Hopkins’ Rose nudibranch, turned California’s central and northern coastline pink a few years ago.
Researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, UCSB, UCSC, and Bodega Marine Laboratory
began tracking the unusually high distribution of this bright pink sea slug in January 2015.
Though Hopkins’ Rose nudibranchs are a common sight in southern California, it is unusual to see them in significant numbers further north, as the water temperature is usually too cold to sustain large populations.
The presence of this particular species of sea slug is thought to be indicative of major climate shifts, and unexpected population booms could be used to measure future changes.