transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Oh, hey, it's the one open table at the cafe that has croissant crumbs on it, but that's fine. Alie Ward, this is Ologies. These are nudibranchs. We're talking sluggy beauties that you didn't know you needed to love. The designs, the drama, the discoveries. Nudibranchs. What are they? They're soft-bodied mollusks of the sea. They live in the tropics to the far, snowy corners of Antarctica, from the shallows to the depths. We're going to hear all about them. There's so many species to love. So many that we called upon two members of the same species, both humans, nudibranchologists, who live on opposite sides of the continent but love nudibranchs equally. One is the Senior Curator of California Academy of Sciences, Invertebrate Zoology and Geology Department in San Francisco. He has been there since 1982. He is a legend among people who wear wetsuits for a living. We're going to talk all about it. Our second expert, I know, we almost never have more than one expert, but there was just too much to talk about, is an Assistant Curator at the American Museum of Natural History and studies the biodiversity and evolution of marine invertebrates, including nudibranchs. Yes, nudibranchology, it's a word. It means nude or naked gills or brachia, slugs with outside lungs, and they have so much more going for them. We're going to get into it. But first, a quick thank you to all the listeners supporting us via patreon.com/ologies, where you can submit questions before we record, and you can join that for $1 a month. Thank you to everyone who is there. We also have Ologies merch, if you want to put us on your bodies, at ologiesmerch.com. And for $0, you can help us out so much by just leaving a review. I do read them all and they keep me going on days when I open the news and I want to die under the porch like an old dog. So let's stick together, but thank you, Riley Rainbow, who wrote, I'm officially the coolest at dinner parties. My coworkers and family like my weird facts. Also, they write, if you have children, there's Smology's 100 Air Horns. My kids ask for their podcast every morning on their way to school. Thank you so much for the review, Riley Rainbow, and also for the reminder that we have totally G-rated, kids-safe episodes that are trimmed down for carpool length. They're available in their own separate podcast feed. They're called Smology's, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. Again, look for it wherever you find podcasts. Tell a friend. Okay, let's get into the weeds in the seagrass and the rocky crevices to discover facts about bunny horns, finger backs, stolen weaponry, eventful first dates, high fashion, tiny eyes, marriage equality, sea slug cameos, the board game you need, how your phone can warm a scientist's heart, and the best reason to slip on a windbreaker and leave the house with marine biologists, researchers, malachologists, and, of course, nudibranchologists, doctors Jessica Goodheart and Terry Gosliner.

Speaker 2:
[03:18] Terry Gosliner.

Speaker 1:
[03:19] Perfect. Now, you have been studying aquatic creatures since you were just a wee wee thing in high school up in the Bay Area, correct?

Speaker 2:
[03:29] That is absolutely right, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:32] Have you been a water person your whole life? Do you like getting in a dive suit and getting into the water, or do you mostly just love the discovery?

Speaker 2:
[03:42] I'm a water person. I was a swimmer in high school. I feel like I sprouted gills at an early age and haven't looked back.

Speaker 1:
[03:53] Can you take me back to the first time that you saw a nudibranch in the wild? Was it fresh water? Was it saltwater? Was it in a tide pool, naked eye? Do you remember some of those first sightings?

Speaker 2:
[04:10] I remember it very clearly like it was yesterday. I had seen pictures of nudibranchs in books, and I always wanted to see one in the wild. As a kid, I went out to local tide pools and looked around, and I never found one. Then I had this amazing high school biology teacher who used to take classes out to all kinds of environments, and we did a lot of exploring. So I told him that I really wanted to see a nudibranch, and he said, I can make that happen next week. So we went out to the tide pools, and it turned out I wasn't looking in the right place. Immediately, I saw this beautiful red, blue, and yellow nudibranch in the tide pools. I said to myself at that point, I really want to find out more about these animals, and I'm still finding out more about those animals today.

Speaker 1:
[05:15] Is there any way to estimate how many kinds of nudibranchs are out there?

Speaker 2:
[05:19] I did a paper trying to predict what that might be, and we said, this was back in the mid 1990s, that there were probably 6,000 species of nudibranchs. And after looking at the recent data, they're probably three to five times that amount. So, maybe up to 30,000 species of nudibranchs.

Speaker 1:
[05:44] In which, by contrast, there's what? Less than 5,000 species of mammals, right? So, we're talking about incredible diversity and numbers. And you have discovered over 1,000 species, 1,500 species. How many species have you discovered?

Speaker 2:
[06:01] About 1,500, but we've only formally named about 450 of them. So, we got a lot of work to do. And fortunately, I have a great group of students and other collaborators around the world that I work with, and we can make some headway, but I find them faster than I can work on them.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] Okay. Well, you were obviously not doing something right, and then you learned how to do something extremely right.

Speaker 2:
[06:33] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[06:34] What was that trick to finding them?

Speaker 2:
[06:37] Well, it was knowing the right habitat, and I was looking in this other tide pool area that was maybe 100 yards away from Nirvana. Once I knew to go over this ridge and look in the tide pools on the other side of the ridge, it was a magical world.

Speaker 1:
[06:59] I cannot adequately describe the otherworldly beauty of these sea slugs. Picture a chiclet or a lozenge, but it's made of squishy flesh with a ridge along its back of these finger-like nubbins called serrata. They're used for breathing or defense, and they're just swaying with the currents so gently. Now, nudibranchs, they can range a rainbow of color palettes, like there's one with a cobalt blue body striped with pumpkin orange. Others that look like a lilac flying carpet with two bunny ears and a yellow pom-pom tail that's actually gills or brachial plumes. There are ghostly white nudibranchs studded with these short black bumps and two horns on the head that look like smoldering matchsticks. Others look like tiny giraffes and are velvety black with acid green spots, and a tail like a peacock if it were made out of slug feathers. Some nudibranchs breathe out of a rosette of streamers surrounding their butthole. They are better creatures than us. Do not Google nudibranch colors if you're high. It will break you. If you need to cuddle a nudibranch, don't. But do visit a site called Wool Creature Lab featuring the work of fiber artist Irina Borovic, who handcrafted an entire menagerie of tiny, felted wool nudibranchs to pay homage to their real-life slimy sisters. Nudibranchs, you may have never heard of one until this moment, but they will slam stars in your eyes so hard. Terry is not the only nudibranchologist consumed with wonder. I also chatted with a scientist who uses genomics to investigate their evolution and is an assistant curator of mollusks at the American Museum of Natural History's Goodheart Lab in New York.

Speaker 3:
[08:47] Hi, I'm Jessica Goodheart and my pronouns are she, her.

Speaker 1:
[08:50] I bet people tell you how much they love your name constantly.

Speaker 3:
[08:54] Yeah, it's very common. Or like, do you have a good heart? That's another one.

Speaker 1:
[08:59] Do you think people are nicer to you because of your name?

Speaker 3:
[09:02] I don't know the answer to that. That's a good question. I guess I would never know. There's no way to know for sure.

Speaker 1:
[09:09] You could change it and see if people are rude to you.

Speaker 3:
[09:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[09:12] But I don't recommend it.

Speaker 3:
[09:14] Probably not.

Speaker 1:
[09:15] Have you always been more of an aquatic person than a terrestrial person?

Speaker 3:
[09:20] Definitely. Yeah, I much prefer the ocean to anything else. But I also grew up in California, so I think that changes the dynamic a bit.

Speaker 1:
[09:28] Dr. Goodheart told me that she was technically from West Covina. A suburb 30 or so miles east of LA, which features prominently in the beloved musical comedy series, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Speaker 2:
[09:50] Well, we are two hours from the beach while foreign traffic.

Speaker 1:
[09:53] So you grew up in California, somewhat near the ocean. Was there like an early interest in like, I got to do a job that gets me in that water? I have to be in that water.

Speaker 3:
[10:06] So yes. I mean, when I was a kid, we would go to the beach and we would dig up the sand crabs that, I don't actually even know what they're officially called. I really should check into that. But we would dig those up and I loved picking them up, putting them in a bucket and looking at them. But then as I got older, I didn't really know that this job existed, I guess. So I started preparing to be a vet. I wanted to study to be a veterinarian and I just didn't really like it. I thought I would, I love animals, but it just wasn't really for me.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] Jessica says that her parents weren't scientists, so she didn't have a blueprint, but she loved her biology classes and she reached out to a researcher who happened to study sea slugs. So careers, sometimes to get to the right spot, you got to go all over the place. Speaking of. What about their range? Is it rare to see a nudibranch? Or are they in every marine environment?

Speaker 3:
[10:56] They are everywhere, I would say. You can find them in the deep sea, you can find them in obviously the tropics and polar areas. They are everywhere. Whether you can see them or not, I think is a different question. Sometimes they're harder to see in certain places than others or certain animals are harder to see. Certainly in the tropics, you tend to get a lot more diversity and it's easier. But they're usually there, if you know, kind of where and how to look.

Speaker 1:
[11:24] How, where and how do you look?

Speaker 3:
[11:26] There's a couple of ways, I guess. So we look, we scuba dive, we snorkel. Sometimes we just do tide pooling or we do what I call docking, which is just going on floating docks and looking on the side. Usually, there's a bunch of growth. But basically, you look for their prey and you should be able to find nudibranchs as long as they're in season. So once you start getting farther north, you can have more seasonality, I would say. And sometimes, they do kind of wash in and then wash out. You might see hundreds or thousands of them all in one spot. And then like the next week, they're totally gone. Because they've finished reproducing and that's it.

Speaker 1:
[12:03] Where do they like to live? And I mean, this might be not a very smart question, but are there freshwater nudibranchs or are they all in marine environments?

Speaker 2:
[12:13] They're all in marine environments. There are some relatives of nudibranchs that are found in some freshwater streams and tropical environments very close to where they empty into the ocean. So there are some that can live in freshwater, but they're not true nudibranchs. They're like nudibranch cousins, and they can survive in freshwater.

Speaker 1:
[12:40] OK, so the true nudibranchs that are in marine environments, what type of vibe do they like? What type of habitat is perfect for them? Does it have a lot of algae in it? Does it have a lot of rocky surfaces? Do they like to hide?

Speaker 2:
[12:54] Well, you can find nudibranchs almost anywhere, as it turns out. And basically, you find a higher diversity in rocky environments and in places like California and tidal pools along the coast. But the greatest abundance and where I've spent most of my time studying nudibranchs is in tropical coral reef ecosystems. But you can find them off sandy beaches. You can find them down in the deep ocean. You can find them in the Arctic and Antarctic. Wherever there's saltwater, there are nudibranchs.

Speaker 1:
[13:31] What kind of places have you ended up going, looking for them?

Speaker 3:
[13:34] A lot of cool places. So since I started the lab, we've done collecting in Florida and other semi-local places, so in the US. I went to Western Australia. I took my lab to Scotland. We have field expeditions planned to Madagascar and American Samoa. I've been to French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Panama. They're everywhere, so it's really nice to be able to just kind of go wherever I want. And there's sea slugs there. There's nudibranchs there.

Speaker 1:
[14:03] Did you ever think growing up that like your passport would be this stamped because of sea slugs?

Speaker 3:
[14:09] I definitely didn't, mostly because I don't think I really understood what sea slugs were. I have a really good picture, though, of myself that I found going through my parents' garage a couple years ago. It's a picture of me. I might have been like six or seven holding a sea slug, holding a big Aplasia californica, which is one of the big ones in the tidepools, the sea hare. I had no idea this picture existed, and I found it. I'm like, oh, that's cool. I actually recreated the picture. I was in San Diego at the time. I wore as much of a similar outfit as I could, and I held up a sea slug, and I made the same face, which was a pretty disgusted face, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[14:52] What exactly is a sea slug? What is a nudibranch?

Speaker 3:
[14:57] So all nudibranchs are sea slugs, but not all sea slugs are nudibranchs. So in general, the way that we qualify what is a sea slug, they're within this group called heterobranchia. It also contains pulminates or land snails and slugs. So it's not just sea slugs, it's not just things without a shell. A lot of them do have shells, but sea slugs generally are considered ones that either have a reduced shell, so a shell that for whatever reason is either internal or just smaller, so they can't really retract into it the same way, or they've just lost it completely as adults. That's how we classify them. It used to be called a pistobranchia, but we realized later that it actually, they've lost shells multiple times.

Speaker 1:
[15:42] So as we have said, all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. And nudibranchs are in an order all their own because they have no shells as adults and they have external gills like those bronchial plumes, or they breathe through those fingery serratta on their back. And they use those bunny ears, aka rhinophores, to sense what's happening around them, all in a quest to eat stuff, to make more nudibranchs, and survive the haters.

Speaker 3:
[16:12] But there seems to be a lot of transitions to different prey types which may be involved. Them evolving these really cool defense mechanisms may have allowed them to diversify.

Speaker 1:
[16:21] They're so diverse, and yet they seem like they would be so vulnerable because they're out in the ocean where everything is looking for a snack. And here are these squishy, beautiful, frilly things.

Speaker 2:
[16:37] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[16:38] How did they evolve to survive all of these environments?

Speaker 2:
[16:42] Well, that's really an interesting story. But basically, they evolved other defense mechanisms. They feed on a wide variety of things, like sponges that are very toxic. They feed on sea anemones and jellyfish and their relatives, and they can incorporate the stinging cells from their prey into their own bodies and use them for a defense mechanism. So they figured out some very clever ways to basically exploit chemical defense and chemical warfare as a way of being able to crawl around without a shell. And if you think about it, building a shell is energetically very expensive to produce a shell. You have to incorporate calcium carbonate, you then have to secrete it, and then you're burdened with crawling around with your house on your back like a camper truck. And basically, it doesn't allow you to have the kind of mobility and freedom of movement, and it weighs a lot. So being free of a shell has opened up a whole new world for nudibranchs in terms of ecological and evolutionary opportunities.

Speaker 1:
[17:58] Speaking of a whole new world, well, I guess that's, I think that's a different Disney movie, but are there nudibranchs in The Little Mermaid? Should there be?

Speaker 2:
[18:07] There must be. I haven't looked that closely, but if the animators were doing their job, they're definitely nudibranchs.

Speaker 1:
[18:18] What about Finding Nemo? I wonder if Finding Nemo has nudibranchs.

Speaker 2:
[18:21] Yeah. I've seen nudibranchs in the background and Finding Nemo for sure.

Speaker 1:
[18:27] I did find a pair of nudibranchs who are extras in The Little Mermaid. They each have an orange underside and a Barbie pink body with deep fuchsia accents, and they appear to be based on Mexichromas mariae. And while I really appreciate the attention to detail on that color palette, I did notice that this canoodling nudibranch couple made up of one plain-faced partner and another with eyelashes and lipstick was so heteronormative. I think it means that The Little Mermaid researchers either were ill-informed about nudibranch gender fluidity or they just wrongly assumed that the world wasn't ready for it. Now Finding Nemo, though, went a solo route, and it features one blood-red, fluttering hexabranches sanguineus, also known as the Spanish dancer. And it's got this wide, ribbony body and kind of a ballet-level grace as it undulates in the water. Alas, though, this fancy dancer has but a cameo. No speaking parts. Is the world still not ready? Maybe it's time that there's a Pixar movie about them or at least featuring one.

Speaker 3:
[19:34] I think so. Yeah, I agree with that. I also think there'd be a good board game. Like, have you ever played Wingspan?

Speaker 1:
[19:42] Yes, yes.

Speaker 3:
[19:43] I think there should be a New to Brank version of Wingspan, for sure. Or like a Sea Slug version. There's a lot of really cool Sea Slugs.

Speaker 1:
[19:50] Wingspan, of course, you know this. It's that instant classic tabletop game about ornithology. It was created by a letologist or professional game designer and nature enthusiast, Elizabeth Hargrave.

Speaker 3:
[20:01] I've been thinking about emailing her for a long time. And I just, I don't know, I felt almost too nerdy, like thinking that I might suggest that and be like, Oh God, more nudibranch stuff. I only do nudibranch, but I don't know. It's my thing, right?

Speaker 1:
[20:18] Someone's got, yes. It's your, when you know as much about nudibranch and you get to work with them, then it's okay to be the nudibranch guy. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[20:26] Absolutely. Yeah. But yeah, I think, I think a game would be great.

Speaker 1:
[20:31] So I had the fortune of being introduced to Elizabeth via enigmatology guest, the magician and professional crossword writer, David Gwong. So I did what anyone with excess giddiness might do. And I emailed Elizabeth to tell her that Jessica says that nudibranchs deserve a board game. And Elizabeth shot me back a note. She said that she, quote, loves that idea from what little I know about nudibranchs, mostly that they look awesome. Quote. So if these sea slugs don't someday make it to your dining room table for game night, maybe an animator out there will be inspired to up their visibility. So deserved. I feel like they are ready for their own animated movie because they're dazzling and they're stunning. They already look like cartoons. Can you describe visually some of the nudibranchs out there? Because when I see pictures, they look like AI.

Speaker 2:
[21:28] Well, they do. Only AI is less creative than the real world. Exactly. There's some really great examples of how nudibranchs have entered into popular culture. There's a website that shows David Bowie in various outfits and actual species of nudibranchs that actually have the same outfits. So anything that David Bowie could have come up with, nudibranchs did it before. So that's a really great example of how creative the costume design component of nudibranchs really is. If you think of Pokemon, the Pikachu is based on a nudibranch.

Speaker 3:
[22:16] Is it really?

Speaker 2:
[22:17] It really is. There's a brand new species of nudibranch that we've discovered that has the exact same color pattern, and it looks just like Pikachu. So they have inspired some actual creation of animation characters in terms of Pokemon.

Speaker 1:
[22:38] This is true. If you don't believe me, you can get yourself in front of the 2019 article in the Journal of Geek Studies titled Pokemalesca, the mollusk-inspired Pokemon, which has a wealth of information and visual aids with Pokemon characters and their marine inspirations. If that sounds backwards, you're also right. There's at least one nudibranch named after a Pokemon, such as the tiny elusive and yellow Pikachu nudibranch, which is known in business settings as the Casera Pacifica. But in nudibranchology, all roads lead to Pokemon or they circle it like a roundabout.

Speaker 3:
[23:16] I think the hard part though is it's hard for me to recreationally dive anymore because I have a hard time not looking for nudibranches. It's just the thing that I'm automatically wired to do now.

Speaker 1:
[23:29] Got to catch them all. You got to check it out.

Speaker 3:
[23:31] I did love Pokemon as a child.

Speaker 1:
[23:35] They're so beautiful and so freely and bright colored. But I'm sure that those are probably the ones that are sticking in our heads a bit. But do they range visually from ones that blend into their environment to ones that are maybe give off a lot more warning colors?

Speaker 2:
[23:55] Yeah. And that's a really good point is that some of them are incredibly skilled at building color patterns that blend in. I mean, amazingly, there's some that are found on seagrass, that are grassy green with stripes, the exact width and spacing of the veins in the seagrass. There's some that are very skilled at hiding as well as those that are really just over the top in terms of advertising their presence in the natural world.

Speaker 1:
[24:29] What does a field day look like for you? Like when you're in the field, do you have a loop? Do you have to go out at low tide? How do you, you must be so good at those puzzles where you have to like spot the difference. You must have such a good attention to detail.

Speaker 2:
[24:45] Yeah. Well, oftentimes, you know, I equate it to an Easter egg hunt because you're looking for these brightly colored objects that are hidden, you know, at the base of bushes, which are in the case of the ocean, and they're hydroids or bryozoans or branching things. And you're looking for these tiny little things that are just living jewels that are buried in this big world, and suddenly you see them, and it's just magical in terms of what they reveal. And so being able to spot them takes a lot of training. And when I go diving, I usually start out early in the morning. And once I got to where I needed reading glasses, I needed to have a loop or some way of magnifying things.

Speaker 1:
[25:44] Remember, he's been studying nudibranchs for approximately 60 years. That's a lot of nudibranch spotting. If you too need a loop, either now or down the road, and you want to know why your eyes are so mean to you, our ophthalmology episode with Dr. Reen Waynes can explain it. Or our recent optical technology episode about how glasses work is there for you. They will tell you how they got on your face.

Speaker 2:
[26:07] I do have some visual aids underwater now. But I think the opportunity is for people younger than 40 to be the best spotters of nudibranchs. But it takes a trained eye and you have to know what you're looking for. You have to know what potential prey might look like and what things they might be eating on and then searching very carefully once you find those things that are likely targets.

Speaker 1:
[26:40] What are they out there eating? Plankton? Do they ever eat their own babies?

Speaker 3:
[26:44] They may target one thing, but they have a lot of things in their digestive system. But they're carnivores, so things like sponges or cnidarians or what else, bryozoans, things like that, other animals, essentially.

Speaker 1:
[26:59] Carnivores, that surprises me. I thought they'd be out there eating algae.

Speaker 3:
[27:04] Nope. Yeah, they're eating other animals. There's even a genus that eats egg masses of other nudibranchs or eats basically the embryos of other nudibranchs. Yeah, some nudibranchs eat other nudibranchs.

Speaker 1:
[27:17] A baby muncher, jeez louise.

Speaker 3:
[27:19] I know, it's brutal.

Speaker 1:
[27:20] I was hungry, but I could still eat. In terms of the evolution of things, how far back do they go? I can't imagine that they would fossilize well because they're so squishy.

Speaker 2:
[27:31] Well, and this is really what I find an intriguing point, because when I first started studying nudibranchs, they have virtually no fossil record. So the advantage of that is that you aren't encumbered by facts, so you can make up scenarios that you want and speculate a little bit. But now we have modern tools with the advancement of studying DNA. You can see how much evolutionary divergence there is in their genetic material. And that tells us, in fact, they go back at least 250 million years. Wow. And when they first lost, probably lost their shells because they diverged from their closest relatives that have a shell about 250 million years ago.

Speaker 1:
[28:21] So it would be absolute flim flam to think that nudibranchs never developed a shell. They just were over it and they were on to the next thing. And they had better defenses?

Speaker 2:
[28:33] No, they do have a shell.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] Oh, what?

Speaker 2:
[28:36] As a larval stage, all nudibranchs have a shell. The larva has a tiny little coiled shell that looks just like a little snail shell. And once they spend a few weeks in the plankton and they experience the cue for metamorphosis, which is usually their adult food species, once they detect that and they've reached a certain level of maturity, they immediately drop down to the bottom and literally crawl out of the shell and become a nudibranch. So people say, well, slugs are really primitive, they don't have shell. Well, in fact, it's the opposite. They are a higher form of evolution and have discarded their shell.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] So when it comes to shells, nudibranchs are like less is more. But when it comes to their feathery crest or serrata or bronchial plumes on their back or their rhinophore antlers, they are flashy. They're like your great aunt from Boca if she got invited to the Met Gala. But their gills still are nude. They're still out there and unprotected, right? Yeah. Can you explain a little bit how their gills are working? Are they taking oxygen out of the water like any guild kind of animal? Or why are the gills so prominent in their identity?

Speaker 2:
[30:03] That's a really good question. And I think part of the reason is that there are a lot of color patterns that are associated with the gills. And because they have greater activity, because they are not encumbered by a shell, their metabolism is much higher and so they need more oxygen.

Speaker 1:
[30:22] And Terry says that the gills have become way fluffier than what a shell could ever contain. And yes, of course, they serve fashion and function, but that's not all they serve. Let's talk nematicists. Now, a snail, they got a house. They have a ceramic feeling house. They're like, see, I'm in here. Slugs out there raw dogging it in the ocean. So does that mean that they just have to have like weaponry or like defense? Do they tend to evolve other ways to be like, don't you dare eat me?

Speaker 3:
[30:54] Yeah, it seems like it. So a lot of nudibranchs and other sea slugs have, they can sometimes make their own defenses, but they often seal defenses. So some seal the stinging organelles or stinging structures from cnidarians like jellyfish or anemones, others steal chemical defenses from their prey like sponges.

Speaker 1:
[31:14] Now, when you say these stinging type of structures, when they steal them, where do they, do they have like a purse? Like, do they have a pocket? Do they just absorb them? Do they eat them and then they come out? How does that even work?

Speaker 3:
[31:29] Yeah, I really like the purse idea. So nudibranchs have this special structure similar to all other snails and a lot of other mollusks. It's called a radula. And when they eat, they basically scrape pieces of tissue off of their prey.

Speaker 1:
[31:44] Like imagine if you were sitting down to eat a block of cheddar, but you had no teeth, but your tongue was a cheese grater.

Speaker 3:
[31:51] So in this case, it would be, let's say, an anemone where they're just sort of breaking pieces off. When that happens, these stinging structures, they fire from the anemone. So they have this sort of cuticle lining early on in their digestive system that allows them to protect themselves from that. But not all of them fire. And so what happens is the ones that haven't fired move up into their digestive gland and they have these special sacs. You could say a bursar or something like that, a little bit of an arsenal, so to speak. At the very end of there, they have these like finger-like projections off their backs. They're called serrata. And inside the very tips of those are these special sacs. And in those sacs, there's these cells that actually pick up these structures and keep them. And that's how they're sort of stored until they're used for defense.

Speaker 1:
[32:38] And they're stored, but they don't fire off like firecrackers on accident. Like how do they make sure they don't pew, pew, pew, you know?

Speaker 3:
[32:47] Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I, there's a couple of ways we think this might happen. There's some evidence that some nudibranchs, at least one species that has been investigated, the mucus that they have on their bodies seems to somehow prevent some of them from firing. Not all of them, but some of them. But then what we think is happening inside their bodies is that these stinging structures have some sort of maturation process that hasn't finished. And so they can't fire until that process is complete. And so what we think is happening is that they're immature going through the digestive system, they get picked up, and somehow are able to finish their development or finish getting ready to fire inside of the nudibranch. Nuts.

Speaker 1:
[33:34] And if you're still hungry for more facts on that, you can feast on a recent Goodheart Lab paper titled A Subset of Conserved Phagocytic Genes are Likely Used for the Intracellular Theft of Nudarian Stinging Organelles in Nudibranch Gastropods, which looks at how different tissues hang on to the consumed organelles to repurpose for defense. And some species can grab an immature stinging organelle from their prey, and then they cram it up into a little sack at the tip of their serrata, kind of poised like a poison dart nerf gun.

Speaker 2:
[34:07] And then there's a little hole in the tip of that finger-like appendage, the serrata, that then they can expel and induce the firing of those nematicists. How they actually do that is really not understood yet at this point. And it points out to one of the things that's so true of most of nature is there's so many things that still need to be studied and understood. And there's so many opportunities for future generations of young scientists to help solve some of those riddles that we simply don't know about yet.

Speaker 1:
[34:46] When they're using those stinging appendages, are they stunning prey to eat? Are they zapping predators? Are they killing anything that's trying to eat them? What kind of range of this ammo are we looking at? This is artillery here.

Speaker 2:
[35:03] You know, if something tries to nibble on it, it gets a bad taste in its mouth and it learns to recognize the color pattern and will avoid trying to feed on them in the future. And oftentimes when a fish or another visual predator tries feeding on the nudibranch, it ends up spitting it out and the nudibranch crawls away unharmed.

Speaker 1:
[35:28] Later.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] And it's such an unpleasant experience for a lot of these fish. I've done this experimentally in the lab, where after nudibranch has created this horrible experience for a fish, and you can actually see it, what's happening to the fish. It'll sit there on the bottom looking really unhappy and its gills will be flaring and it will look like it's, you know, if it could barf, it would do that, you know? I mean...

Speaker 1:
[36:01] It sounds like hot ones, the hot sauce competition.

Speaker 2:
[36:06] Yeah. It's like trying to eat lots of different intensities of chili peppers.

Speaker 1:
[36:10] The inside of your body is made out of asbestos.

Speaker 2:
[36:14] And then on the other end of the spectrum, there's some that feed on things like the Portuguese Manowar, jellyfish. And so the nematocysts are exactly the same as the Portuguese Manowar. So if someone sees one of those nudibranchs, they usually live in the open ocean, but they occasionally get driven ashore by winds. And if you find one of those nudibranchs on the beach and you pick it up, you'll get the same sting as you would if you'd picked up a Portuguese Manowar. So they can really pack a wallop in some cases.

Speaker 1:
[36:50] Have you ever, for science, had to put a nudibranch in your mouth to see what that is like or get stung by one?

Speaker 2:
[36:57] I have. When I was younger and less smart, I tried putting a nudibranch in my mouth. And it wasn't really horrible, but it was that sort of peppery kind of feeling, being in numb lips for probably about 15, 20 minutes. You definitely knew that you had something in your mouth that you shouldn't have.

Speaker 1:
[37:26] You were like that dejected fish, just sitting on a rock going, what have I done?

Speaker 2:
[37:31] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[37:31] What have I done?

Speaker 2:
[37:33] Was this a good idea?

Speaker 1:
[37:35] You lived to tell the tale.

Speaker 2:
[37:37] I did.

Speaker 1:
[37:38] What do you have to do? I know we've done Rebecca Holm, we've covered midusology and toxinology. Do not pee on it. You don't need to pee on it. You don't need to pee on anything, right?

Speaker 3:
[37:49] Hot water, apparently.

Speaker 1:
[37:51] Some water in that. Is it an emergency situation like call a helicopter, get airlifted to hospital if you get stung by a nudibranch?

Speaker 3:
[38:00] Most of them no. Most of them are not bad. In touch tanks, when you go to aquaria, often you see anemones in there and you touch them and they're sticky. Those are the nematosis. So in that case, it's not a big deal. But I think there are a few species that we know feed on things that are a bit more dangerous, and there are some times when I touch them and I can feel it a little bit, they're usually not that bad. But I don't actually know about the Portuguese Manobor nematosis. I feel like they're pretty dangerous, but I don't know that they'll kill you. I don't want anyone to think that they should touch them because that's true though.

Speaker 1:
[38:35] More coming up on one of the weirdest looking sea creatures, this inch long glaucus atlanticus, aka the blue angel, aka the blue sea dragon, aka the sea swallow, aka the dragon slug. It lives up to the name. What about sexual dimorphism?

Speaker 2:
[38:53] Well, this is another really interesting and somewhat kinky part of Mutebrank reproduction is that they're all hermaphrodites. They have both sexes in the same individual. And you might ask, well, why would they do that? And what we found is that this is an adaptation that you find in a lot of organisms that have relatively low populations that will basically devote more energy into producing both eggs and sperm and the complex reproductive organs they need to exchange eggs and sperm with each other. So they can't fertilize themselves. They have to outcross with another individual. And I always equate this of basically, if you had a drawer full of socks and you weren't really careful and you didn't put all your socks by pairs after you got them out of the laundry and you just put them in the drawer. But if they're all the same color, then any two makes a pair. And that's if all the nudibranchs have both reproductive organs, any two that encounter each other can mate and produce offspring. And so it's an adaptation for relatively low populations.

Speaker 1:
[40:14] Let us celebrate same-socks marriage. I wish it were that easy in our species. What about how that insemination happens? I know with terrestrial slugs, it can be this really beautiful display of hanging and these tendrils of organs. What does it look like in nudibranchs? And I understand some sea slugs even will have cranial traumatic insemination. It runs the gamut in terms of romance. How is that reproduction happening?

Speaker 2:
[40:50] So nudibranchs, they don't live very much in a visual world. They're more living in a chemical world. They have eyes, but those eyes usually aren't image-forming eyes. They're just detecting light and dark. And so to find a mate, they're detecting other members of their same species by chemical means. And so they're tracking them down. And it's basically, you know, having perfume as an attractant. It's wafting across the plane, and you're following that intoxicating scent. And so that's how nudibranchs come in contact with each other. But then once they encounter each other, some species are actually cannibalistic. Oftentimes, if two encounter each other, and it's a cannibalistic species, if they're of different sizes, the larger one will eat the other one.

Speaker 1:
[41:50] Before mating or after or not mating at all?

Speaker 2:
[41:54] Before mating.

Speaker 1:
[41:55] Oh, no.

Speaker 2:
[41:57] Sometimes before mating, but usually the eating driver seems to be more intense than the reproductive one.

Speaker 1:
[42:05] Wow. Sometimes you're just more hungry than horny. Mother nature knows priorities.

Speaker 2:
[42:11] Others, if they are the same size, they will mate, but then sometimes one of them won't eat the other one.

Speaker 1:
[42:20] They got what they needed.

Speaker 2:
[42:22] Yeah, they got what they needed and they have their reproductive organs on their right side of the body. So two individuals will pull up next to each other with their two right sides. It's almost like going to a drive-up window at a fast food restaurant. One of them offers money and the other one gives you your happy meal. And it truly is a happy meal for some of them.

Speaker 3:
[42:53] Oh my god.

Speaker 1:
[42:55] So yeah, if you lived in a small town, it was really hard to meet people or you were just really far away from other folks, you might have a better shot at love if everyone's by. Nudibranchs get it. Also, I did peek a gander at what they're working with. Obviously, it varies by species, but sometimes it just looks like two worms kissing. As for their butt, some species have that circle of brachial plumage, like a puffy tail. They breathe through and that can be called a butt flower because you stare down the barrel of it and that anus is right in the middle. Don't they kind of poop on their own back in gills? Sure. Guess what? The ocean is like surround sound, but a bidet, so whatever. Freddie and Eli, Reese Parini and Andy Pepper, as well as Amanda Lask, wanted to know, Andy Pepper says, I know they're hermaphroditic, but can't fertilize themselves. So what's the point if you still need a partner? So what is going on down south, which might be near their head with a slug? You never know where that's going to be.

Speaker 3:
[44:00] Yeah, it is near their heads actually. So yeah, nudibranchs are, for the most part, simultaneous hermaphrodites is how we would call it. So they have both male and female reproductive systems at the same time. There is some evidence that they might develop the male parts first and be able to produce sperm first, which makes sense. They're kind of cheap in a lot of ways, so it doesn't take as long maybe to generate them. So I think the most interesting aspect of this though is even though they can't self-fertilize, they do what we call reciprocal mating. So every time they're reproducing, it's not just like a one-way transaction. It's like they're both kind of getting something out of it to maximize the chances of everything working, I suppose.

Speaker 1:
[44:45] Is it a sea slug that will do traumatic insemination?

Speaker 3:
[44:50] Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a stack of glossens that do that. It's like hypodermic insemination where they just sort of stab and crawl away. But as far as I know, there's no nudibranchs that do that. They are much more, I guess, kind.

Speaker 1:
[45:05] It's good to know.

Speaker 3:
[45:07] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[45:07] It's good. I would have pinned that on them too. So I'm glad that we could clear up that flim flam. I would have blamed them for that. Yes, kind. Aside from meeting up for a first date and finding your partner shorter than expected, so you eat them. Or maybe you noticed that they had babies, and then you slurp them up like boba. Nudibranchs can be messy. Speaking of offspring. Are they hard to keep in aquaria?

Speaker 3:
[45:31] Can I curse on the show?

Speaker 1:
[45:33] Yeah, of course, you can. Of course.

Speaker 3:
[45:35] They're fucking hard to keep in aquaria. We do have one species in the lab. It's called Berghia Stefaniae. I love to tell the story that this is actually a species that my master's advisor, Angel Valdez, he named after his wife, Stephanie, which is really nice. We have that in the lab, and that's partly because it's actually easy to get it to not just lay eggs and to survive, but also we are able to get the larvae to hatch into juveniles. That's honestly the biggest problem is getting them to settle. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[46:08] So what is going to nudge a larval nudibranch into its adult form? If you know, please tell Jessica so she can tell all the other frustrated nudibranchologists all over the earth, because it is not easy, folks, and it's different for like all tens of thousands of species. It might be the food source cues, might be the exact temperature and strength of the currents. Perhaps it's whatever anemone that they're feeding on, and they just don't like it that day. So yeah, being a parent to thousands of fledgling nudies, it's not a task for the weak hearted. Do they lay eggs and then the babies just go like, good luck, and then they kind of are up in the plankton with their tiny, tiny little shells until it's time? So are they just like kind of one and done, like good luck out there, kiddos?

Speaker 2:
[46:56] It's pretty much, yeah, you're on your own, kid. But some of them have really yolky eggs that have a lot of nutrient. And oftentimes, the individual that's produced the egg mass, and I won't say mother because they're mother fathers, the individual that laid the egg mass will sort of hang around. But doesn't really provide much protection. And the eggs often have some of the toxic chemicals that protects the adults. So the eggs can be chemically protected as well. So they aren't eaten because they're really enticing morsels with all that yolky good nutrients and protein. So they're not going to get eaten very readily because they are chemically protected as well. But basically, they're on their own to most typically hatch into a larval stage that will spend any time between a few days in the plankton up to six months.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] Oh, wow. And some nudibranchs can spend so long in that baby stage that they coast on the surface as plankton long enough to nearly cross an ocean. Does Peter pan in their way across the world?

Speaker 2:
[48:20] And because nudibranchs are pretty well protected as once they become juveniles and they start feeding on their adult prey, basically, they're immune to predation. So why aren't nudibranchs taking over the entire world? And it's because most of that predation takes place when they're larval stages in the plankton where they really don't have any protection. And probably 90% plus of the individuals that are in the plankton get consumed.

Speaker 1:
[48:52] Well, you know, you were saying the egg laying parent. And I imagine you're talking about how nutrient dense those yolks are. So that's got to be expensive to make as opposed to sperm. So how is it decided which of the two individuals are kind of saddled with the burden of making those eggs versus which are just like, hey, got your sperm, I'll see you. Is it win-lose?

Speaker 2:
[49:16] Well, both individuals from a mating will produce eggs.

Speaker 1:
[49:21] Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[49:22] So they exchange sperm with each other. And so then both of them are fertilized and they can store sperm for several months from that mating. And then when the eggs are mature and ready to pass through the reproductive system, then fertilization of that stored sperm will take place and it may be a couple of months.

Speaker 1:
[49:47] Well, you know, sometimes spaghetti leftovers are better the next day.

Speaker 2:
[49:52] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[49:52] So I get it.

Speaker 2:
[49:53] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[49:54] Sometimes soup gets better.

Speaker 2:
[49:56] It's like pizza for breakfast.

Speaker 1:
[50:01] I have a couple of questions from listeners. Is it okay to ask you have a few more minutes?

Speaker 2:
[50:05] Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:06] Oh, amazing. Okay. But first, let's scatter some cash into the waters of knowledge. This week, we are going to be donating to the wonderful California Academy of Sciences, which is a research institute and a natural history museum in San Francisco, California. It's among the largest museums of natural history in the world. They house over 46 million specimens. They also operate the Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability. If you have never visited, definitely put Cal Academy on your bucket list. Get yourself to San Francisco. There's a rainforest in there. There's penguins. There's a planetarium. There's an aquarium. I went and saw a Cure laser light show at the planetarium and the day that I got braces. I was so glad it was dark in there and also my face hurt so much. Anyway, it's beautiful there. Also, while you're in San Francisco, there are some secret concrete slides hidden in neighborhoods around the city. You climb up some stairs and then you slide down these concrete channels on a cardboard box and it's nuts. It goes so fast. Make sure you have health insurance first, but you got to ask around to where they are. Either way, that donation went to fund the excellent world-class research at San Francisco's Cal Academy, thanks to the sponsors of the show. Let's stick our stumpy little horns into the mailbag and answer some questions from some listeners who submitted via patreon.com/ologies where you too can join for just a scant dollar a month. Well, a few people, Amy Hengst and Brookatini, wanted to know, Brookatini asked what are their little ears for? Are they eye stalks like on terrestrial slugs? Amy said how do their rhinophores help them navigate? What are those little stalks?

Speaker 3:
[51:49] Yeah, so those are what we would call rhinophores. They do not have eyes on them. Their eyes are actually tiny little dots near the base of the rhinophores. Very small, not super functional. So their rhinophores are generally their main way of sensing the world. They do have some other structures near their mouths often, but the rhinophores are where they do a lot of what we would call chemo sensations. So they're able to detect chemicals in the water. They're able to detect also movement in the water. So like if there's currents, things like that. And that's their main way of finding food. So they have these chemoreceptors on there. The signals go down to what we'd call the rhinophore ganglia and help them make decisions about, well, I want to go this way because my prey is that way.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] Their eyes are a little at the bottom though.

Speaker 3:
[52:35] Yeah, super tiny dots.

Speaker 1:
[52:36] Just little ones. But the rhinophores, which look like the bunny ears, are kind of like antenna sensing all kinds of molecules and motions, which makes sense given that rhinophore means nose bearing. So those are the horn-like rabbit ears. And again, the dorsal finger-looking fringe used for gas exchange and picking up sensory cues, those are serata. All of these structures, of course, help them survive in the vulnerable state without a shell. But they have also stolen ammunition. Also heads up, you may hear a jingle. Maybe I'm jostling a tambourine or maybe it's my dog's collar because she doesn't respect my work. Ashley Mars, Abby Grabe, Jennifer Frow, Hannah Johnson, Keyline Pie, Sarah Morricom. So many people wanted to know, in Raina's words, are they poisonous because they look like radioactive caterpillars? Would they be considered poisonous or venomous? Do you have to look at the semantics of that? Are they technically venomous if they don't kill anything? Is it still venom?

Speaker 2:
[53:44] Well, the definition of venomous is not just that they're poisonous, but they have to have a delivery mechanism. So the ones that have the nematocysts that can actually fire, they technically meet the definition of being venomous. But all of them are at least distasteful ranging to some that could probably, if a human consumed them, they could actually suffer some serious health consequences and perhaps even die from that. But you would have to eat a lot of them. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[54:25] If you find that many nudibranchs, they should just apply for a position in your lab because they have a gift.

Speaker 2:
[54:29] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[54:31] What about their brains? What are they working with? Kelly Shaver, Bug and Rug wanted to know. Bug asked, what in the heck are their brains like? Some other folks, Graham and Ads wanted to know. Kelly also asked, can they be trained? Do they learn? What kind of brain are they working with?

Speaker 3:
[54:47] They have something that you might call a brain. It's like a cerebral pleural ganglion is what we would call it. There's these two ganglia that may be fused. Then they have pleural ganglia which are in the middle. Then they have petal ganglia which are towards the foot. Then they have rhinophore ganglia which are for their sensory structures. They have what I would consider a distributed nervous system where they do have some centralization in these ganglia, but largely, they have a lot of peripheral nervous action going on and sensation.

Speaker 1:
[55:23] DJ Bredder asked if they have sentience. Bug and a Rug asked if they have feelings. Do different individuals exhibit different behaviors or do different species like breeds of dogs?

Speaker 2:
[55:33] Yeah. They have a relatively simple nervous system, and they can detect the most important things around their environment, which is the two most important things are individuals of their same species and food. And so they've pretty much got those two things on their minds most of the time, and probably not a whole lot else. And so everything is really driven by feeding and reproduction. They detect light and dark, which is important to, some of them are nocturnally active and are pretty inactive during the day, so that the light levels are really important. I wouldn't say they have feelings in the way that we have feelings, you know, which has its advantage. They don't carry around a lot of emotional baggage, which probably is the reason that New Debranck psychiatrists haven't evolved.

Speaker 1:
[56:44] I envy them right now.

Speaker 2:
[56:46] Yeah. I mean, it's a lot simpler existence. And if all we had to worry about is where we're going to get our next meal and who we're going to mate with, it would be a lot more simple. And, you know, a mating is just a way of perpetuating your species. There's not much attachment in terms of forming bonding pairs like other species that mate for life and really have that. It's a sort of one-night stand and away they go.

Speaker 1:
[57:21] Well, that was actually on the minds of Anna Wolfe, Shay, and Abby Grabe. Anna Wolfe asked, what courtship rituals do they have? And Shay asked, what makes one nudibranch stand out in a sea of suitors? And Abby wanted to know if they shoot love darts like snails do.

Speaker 2:
[57:37] They don't have love darts, but they do have elaborate spines and stuff in their reproductive system. And oftentimes those spines are associated with a gland that probably produces some secretions. But we don't know enough about the courtship and mating. And we do see that oftentimes they will nibble at each other and crawl around each other. And so there is some sort of courtship and recognition process that goes on before mating actually ensues.

Speaker 1:
[58:12] Hmm. So yeah, they enjoy a little artistry, I imagine, as well. Like, that's a beautiful thing. We had some questions about specific species. Per wanted to know why is Glaucus atlanticus so different in shape? Why did it get these poison sacks? And then Kieran H said, Why is the blue Glaucus so different in shape compared to most nudies? Is she just not like the other girls? So I'm not familiar with the Glaucus, but elaborate.

Speaker 2:
[58:41] Okay, they're gorgeous, sort of silvery and bright, shiny blue. And the reason they have that shape is that they're found in the open ocean. I mean, literally on the surface of open waters. And because they feed on things like the Portuguese Man O War, a lot of that unusual shape is to help them maintain flotation on the surface of the ocean. They'll swallow an air bubble to give them buoyancy, and then they spread out their nematocysts that are in the serata and spread out their serata to help maintain that flotation. So that's why they have such an unusual shape is because they live in such a really completely different habitat to most of the species that live on the bottom of tide pools and in shallow waters.

Speaker 1:
[59:40] Oh, how gorgeous. And again, this glaucus type of nudibranch, aka sea swallow, the blue dragon slug, looks almost like this tiny kind of manta ray shape. If it were rimmed in tentacle-like ostrich feather projections and had this silvery blue pattern, they do not look real. I mostly wanted to talk to you about nudibranchs for superficial reasons because they're the weirdest looking things out there.

Speaker 3:
[60:08] Yeah, they're pretty weird.

Speaker 1:
[60:09] But when it comes to nudibranchs, are they all the fanciest sea slugs?

Speaker 3:
[60:15] Definitely not. Really? So I'd say the most sort of charismatic of the nudibranchs are the ones called dorids. These are the most brightly colored ones you often see. They kind of have that standard slug shape like the oval, and they have those beautiful gills off of the back.

Speaker 1:
[60:33] And these dorid nudibranchs, they come in all shapes and colors. They're just stunning. Whoever named them dorids was smitten, as the taxonomy is a nod to a Greek goddess, a sea nymph who went by the name Doris.

Speaker 3:
[60:49] So those are what I would consider the charismatic nudibranchs. I think one really good example is Favillinopsis iodinia.

Speaker 1:
[60:57] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[60:57] It's a species in California that is like bright purple and orange. It's really beautiful and it's commonly found in tide pools, so people often see it. But a lot of them are super, super tiny of the ones I study. So you can think like on the order of millimeters and they're brown, and they still look very cool to me, but maybe not as exciting to the rest of the world.

Speaker 1:
[61:22] We have so many questions. RainingHemily asked, why do sea slugs looks like they are in the most fabulous drag while land slugs look like they're in faded camo in terms of fashion? Those are all evolutionary adaptations to as boarding colors mostly?

Speaker 2:
[61:40] Right. Yes. Basically, so many nidabranchs have evolved those color patterns because they're advertising to predators that they're just tasteful, and not all of the land slugs are just tasteful. They are sometimes tasty morsels, but things like banana slugs, large yellow and green colored slugs that live in the Redwood Forest of California and get really quite large, they are just tasteful and they have toxic mucus. If a dog tries to nibble on a banana slug, it has the same response that one of those fish predators of native ranks have.

Speaker 1:
[62:25] Well, speaking of putting slugs in our mouths, you and I do have that in common. I'm from the Bay Area myself, and so we went on field trips to tide pools, we went to the Redwoods and it was definitely a dare to try to kiss a banana slug, which now that I know about roundworms and stuff, I'm like, that's a rat lung worm. I don't know if banana slugs have rat lung worm, but definitely don't kiss a slug. It's just a PSA I should put out there now that I remember about that.

Speaker 2:
[62:55] Yeah. People love to do that kind of stuff. And most of the times we dodge the bullet and don't have any adverse consequences.

Speaker 1:
[63:06] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[63:07] That's how humans and particularly indigenous people have learned through those experiences, you know, what's food and what's not food. It's all part of that natural curiosity and trying different things. And sometimes there's some adverse consequences.

Speaker 1:
[63:25] Never, ever, ever eat or lick a raw slug. I hate that I have to tell you that, but maybe I do. Rat lungworm is as gross as it sounds. You get it by eating raw snails or slugs who have eaten rat feces. And in some cases, it can cause meningitis that kills you. So as hard as it is to resist, I get it. Don't chew on a garden slug. Maybe wash your backyard fruit. Have you ever encountered anything anthropologically or from a historical perspective about indigenous reactions or lore or folklore with nudibranchs? Is that even well-studied?

Speaker 2:
[64:00] Yeah, it is. But I can only give you like two or three examples that I know of. And basically, there are some nudibranchs that are eaten. There are some that are found in the islands off of Russia that are eaten by indigenous people. But basically, they know where the distasteful parts are and they basically chop those off. And then the rest is pretty edible. In the Cook Islands, there's a species of sea hare that is actually pretty toxic because it feeds on algae that has a lot of toxins. And so the indigenous people there know what organs to remove and then eat the remaining part of the animal after they remove the areas where the distasteful and toxic substances are stored. So there's a lot of indigenous knowledge about that that really reflects a pretty profound understanding of their biology.

Speaker 1:
[65:04] What about, you know, speaking of reflecting and color, NFR. Jelley taught Ashley Tweeten, Earl of Gramelkin, Jordan and Chloe Koshnick for some question asker, wanted to know, are there any UV reactive nudibranchs? Do any glow?

Speaker 2:
[65:19] Yes. There are some that if you shine a black light on them, there is UV reflectance that's certainly beyond our normal spectrum and probably reflects, no pun intended, living in the darker waters where there's not so much light penetration from the visible light spectrum. And so some deep sea fishes probably can see reflectance in the UV range that most shallow water predators don't detect.

Speaker 1:
[65:59] Wow, gosh, I bet that's gorgeous. Do you get to see those? Often do you have to swim around with a black light?

Speaker 2:
[66:06] I've done that on certain night dives. And yeah, it's really surprising what you see. And you know, you try something and as close relative, the one species has no reflectance and the other does. And so that's another puzzle. Why is that the case? And so still so much to figure out and discover.

Speaker 1:
[66:29] So while florescing under certain wavelengths, like ultraviolet light is simply iconic and it's stunning. It is distinct from the inner glow of the bioluminescent. Ayan Denewell, Maddie Julian and Ads want to know, in Maddie Julian's words, do we know of any species that have bioluminescence? Are there any glowing ones?

Speaker 3:
[66:51] Yes, yes, definitely. This is something I'm trying to get into, actually, the bioluminescence questions. So there are actually a few possible origins of bioluminescence in nudibranchs. There is one group called phylaroae. These are super cool nudibranchs. They're polypilagic. And I highly recommend everyone look them up because if you look at them, they just kind of look like translucent fish.

Speaker 1:
[67:17] Okay, nudibranch that looks like a swimming cloud rimmed with fairy lights. No one asked you to look that good, yet here we are.

Speaker 3:
[67:25] They swim with these undulations to kind of make them look like fish. They're bioluminescent. There's also another group called polyserids that there's some bioluminescent taxa. And then there's one newly described species that they have these bioluminescent structures that they can actually autotomize or release. And it's hypothesized to be a form of defense.

Speaker 1:
[67:47] So just sort of like throwing glitter and then running?

Speaker 3:
[67:50] Yeah, that's kind of the idea, I think.

Speaker 1:
[67:53] Just a glitter cloud. Like, look at that.

Speaker 2:
[67:55] Bye.

Speaker 1:
[67:56] What about the hardest thing about working on these little critters?

Speaker 3:
[68:01] The hardest thing? I think the hardest thing, but the thing that's also the most fun, is that they're actually quite hard to find sometimes, right? Like, I think that aspect of it can be very challenging, but I always loved iSpy and Whereas Waldo as a kid. So I think it's also, it feels like a challenge to me, which I really enjoy. Yeah, I would say that's probably one of the main things.

Speaker 1:
[68:29] I'm so sorry that I've kept you so long too, but you're just, you happen to be fascinating and so fun to talk to. So I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2:
[68:39] Well, thanks.

Speaker 1:
[68:41] Last questions I always ask are the hardest and the best things about the job. I imagine conservation has got to be the biggest challenge. Is there anything that when it comes to conservation, you wish people knew more about or you wish that there were more action?

Speaker 2:
[68:56] Well, actually, I feel pretty upbeat about conservation and particularly in places around the world where I work and especially in the Philippines, we work very closely with local communities and share the information that we have not just about New Debranks, but about how ecosystems are doing and we've established some marine protected areas and made recommendations based on New Debrank diversity and work very closely with those communities where they become the sort of bottom up supporters of establishing new marine protected areas because their livelihood depends on it because of ecotourism and diving and they are some of the biggest and strongest advocates for marine protected areas. And so a lot of the reefs where I've been diving in the Philippines for 30 years, plus some of those reefs are in better shape today than they were when I first went there and there was blast fishing using dynamite. That's pretty much been eliminated in most of the places I work. And so there's a growing understanding and actually in remote parts of the world, there is more opportunity and receptivity to education than there is in the states, where we have so much polarization about the topics of climate change and conservation that, in my experience, I don't find as much resistance to scientific fact as what scientists know and how it is generally accepted by local communities versus some of the resistance we see currently in our own society. And so, I'm tremendously upbeat and optimistic about the future, as long as we, and particularly scientists, devote much of their energy to talking to people and building those bridges to not only unearth new knowledge, but share that knowledge and build an understanding of why that knowledge is useful to local people.

Speaker 1:
[71:22] That being said, is there something about the work that vexes you the most? Is there a petty inconvenience about studying new ranks that we should know about?

Speaker 2:
[71:33] Well, you know, the real world always gets in the way of your ambitions and finding funding, asking people for support, spending a lot of time doing that, and particularly in this anti-science climate world that we live in today, it becomes that much more challenging. So I would say, I don't mind spending time to make the case for the value of what we do, but I think not enough scientists devote energy to explaining what they do and why it is actually relevant and important to other people's lives. And the more we do that, the better people will understand and support science. So that is not only a responsibility, but it's a way of making sure that future studies can take place and we can continue to solve some of the mysteries that still remain out there.

Speaker 1:
[72:34] What about your favorite thing about your job or about Nudibranx?

Speaker 3:
[72:38] The thing I like most about Nudibranx is, there's too many options to pick one. I think it sort of comes along with the scuba diving. I love the idea that there's all of these hidden aspects of the ocean or the world that all you have to do is like look hard enough to see them. There's so much you can see that so many people have never seen. I just love the idea of that. That said, my goal is to try and help people see it, so that's something I also enjoy.

Speaker 1:
[73:15] If you can't make it to an ocean, perhaps look on the forearm of someone sitting next to you on the bus. I'm going to just scroll on it to know if you have a Nudibranx tattoo.

Speaker 3:
[73:25] I don't, but I thought about it. And part of the reason I don't have one is that it's kind of the same problem with people asking me like, what's my favorite Nudibranx? Because it's like having kids. I feel like I can't pick one favorite. If I did it and I put it on my body, I'd kind of go, but I wish I'd done that other one. Or why didn't I get both? Then I'd end up with like tattoos everywhere, I guess, which is not a bad thing. But take costs a lot of money.

Speaker 1:
[73:55] You could always do them life size.

Speaker 3:
[73:58] Yeah, true. Very tiny, tiny nudibranchs.

Speaker 1:
[74:02] Let's get a lot of them. Maybe a big sea hair, thigh, sea hair. We all have a little more real estate or-

Speaker 3:
[74:09] Yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 1:
[74:10] A full back tattoo. Jessica Wood wants to know if it's silly of them to get one as a tattoo.

Speaker 3:
[74:17] Absolutely not. No, I love nudibranch tattoos. It's really fun when people show me them, as long as they're in places that are appropriate for me to see.

Speaker 1:
[74:28] Well, upping the stakes a little bit more. Libby Tomko says, I'm adding a nudibranch to my ocean sleeve. Which one should I add? I would tell literally every single person in the world that a scientist picked out my tattoo.

Speaker 3:
[74:42] God, I can't even pick one for myself.

Speaker 1:
[74:46] Well, you have more pressure because you're a nudibranch person.

Speaker 3:
[74:50] Yeah, it's true. I mean, I think glaucus is usually a good one. Those are very pretty and they have a cool pattern and a cool shape that's different from a lot of other nudibranchs. And they seem to be very distinctive. So I feel like that would make a really good tattoo.

Speaker 1:
[75:06] Any particular species?

Speaker 3:
[75:09] They look pretty similar, but glaucus atlanticus, I think is a really good one.

Speaker 1:
[75:14] Anything behaviorally that you want to add about them?

Speaker 3:
[75:17] Yeah, so there's a recent paper that looked at a glaucus species that showed that they're able to use their stinging structures, not just for defense like other nudibranchs do, but they seem to maybe use them to capture prey as well. So the way that they're shaped is kind of flat and they look like they have wings. But what most people don't realize is they're upside down. So their mouths are actually on the top of their color, like where their color patterns are, that's where their mouths are. So what happens is they're kind of floating upside down and they kind of grab on to their prey. And that seems to be how they feed to some extent. And they can capture fish that way. When other types of animals, it's pretty cool. But yeah.

Speaker 1:
[76:01] It's so jujitsu. It's so like, it's very-

Speaker 3:
[76:04] It's kind of what it looks like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[76:06] You know, it's also kill them with kindness. Hug them, hug them to death.

Speaker 3:
[76:12] Yeah. That is in essence what it looks like is, it's just like a big hug.

Speaker 1:
[76:19] All right, Libby and Jessica Wood. Not silly of you to get one, Jessica. And Libby, there's your assignment. Go forth, get in.

Speaker 3:
[76:27] Yep. Tag me on Bluesky when you get it.

Speaker 1:
[76:30] Yeah. What is your Bluesky handle? We'll shout it out right now.

Speaker 3:
[76:35] Yeah. It's mollusks at A, M and H.

Speaker 1:
[76:38] Love.

Speaker 3:
[76:39] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[76:39] So tag Dr. Goodheart in that. And if for some reason you don't want that tattoo, maybe go for Terry's pick. Do you have a favorite nudibranch?

Speaker 3:
[76:48] Oh.

Speaker 1:
[76:48] I know this must be asked of you all the time, but come on.

Speaker 2:
[76:52] Yeah. Okay. So I have two answers to that. And one is, yes, I do, but it changes weekly, which is pretty much the case. But certainly the first new species that I found in the tide pools in California when I was still in high school, has a special place in my heart because my colleague, Gary Williams, who was a high school student with me, and we found it in a senior year of high school. And we named it after that high school mentor, Gordon Chan, who first took us out to the tide pools and really was the person who helped turn on that light and get us on a path towards becoming scientists rather than just curious people. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:
[77:44] That's amazing. So the Halaxa Chani, aka Chan's Dorid, is this beautiful 25 or 30 millimeter or so, about one inch long little lemon yellow sweetie with nubby maroon, rhinophore rabbit ears and a golden crown of bronchial plumage on its little romp. It's speckled with ruddy brown freckles. It's got some elegant beige beauty marks. And yes, we are talking to one of the guys who discovered it six decades ago. And here we are, all the way in the future, hearing tales of oceanic adventures and being inspired to keep our eyes open.

Speaker 2:
[78:27] But being a curious person is the first important step. And so to all of the people that are listening, you are all scientists, you are making observations every time you go out in nature. And scientists need you to make those observations because there aren't enough of us. And so one of the things that we're doing in this spring is we're going to have people going out to California tide pools and document some of the species and post pictures on iNaturalist, which is a great platform to record the natural world. And basically, we really welcome everybody to participate in that process. And it's a really simple one to become involved. And I would encourage everybody to do that and to make observations of what you find in your backyard when you go outside. You don't have to be in a rural or relatively pristine habitat. Cities have vital habitats that have amazing, endangered nature that is worthy of your documenting what happens literally on the street corner or schoolyard where you live or work.

Speaker 1:
[79:45] Oh, my gosh, you're going to make me cry. That's so inspiring and such exactly, exactly what we all need to hear. And this starts in May. This starts next month. So we will link the Cal Academy's Community Science page for the 2026 Sea Slug Search, or you can download the fantastic app iNaturalist and just look for the Sea Slug Search for more info on how an afternoon excursion to a nudie beach can make Terry the happiest sea slug researcher on planet Earth. Now, they're looking for California coastal observations, but no matter where on the planet you are, if you're near the ocean, you can search for nudibranchs. Or if you're not near an ocean, search for any plant or creatures and post them on iNaturalist. It fills the hearts of scientists you'll never meet.

Speaker 2:
[80:33] And you can do it independently. You don't have to be part of that formal going out to the tide pools. You can do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere around where the water tastes salty.

Speaker 1:
[80:48] Oh, that's great. This has been an absolute treasure of a convo. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:
[80:54] You're most welcome. Thanks for inviting me, Alie. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
[81:00] So, yes, ask marine people well-meaning questions. Because honestly, what a wealth of beauty and fun facts and life lessons not to eat slugs. Thank you so much to Dr. Goodheart and Dr. Gosliner for taking the time to be on Ologies, for all the work you do for the voiceless and the tender creatures on this earth. We'll have tons more links on our website at alieword.com/ologies/new to Brankology and more links to Jessica and Terry are right in the show notes. We are at Ologies on Bluesky and Instagram where we will be posting new to Brank Pictures and I'm at Alie Ward on both as well. And we have those shorter kid friendly episodes called Smologies wherever you get podcasts or at the link in the show notes. You can also head to alieword.com/smologies for those. Please tell your friends with kids. We also have merch at ologiesmerch.com and thank you again to patrons who have joined up for a dollar or more a month to support the show. Erin Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malek makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Keeping her rhinophores on the pulse is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. The stomach bubble that keeps us afloat is managing director Susan Hale, and highly evolved and dazzling editors are Jake Chaffee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Also, I just realized that Erin Talbert, I've known her since we were four. We went tide pooling together in third grade for a class trip. I'll never forget it. A Nick Thorburn fluttered out the theme music. If you stick around to the very end, you know I may tell you a secret. This week is that I tend to drink a lot of green tea. I love green tea. I just take it plain. I've been drinking it every day for decades. I like it really weak and watered down or iced. You're like, what's the point? My point was I was like a protest. It's hot in LA, right? I brought a Nalgene for hydration and naturally, I filled it with weak green tea, iced tea. As I walked along, the ice melted. Just in general, green tea gets a little foamy. But here's the thing. There were no bathrooms along the route. Toward the end, someone asked me if my green tea was urine in my Nalgene. That made it harder to stay hydrated because that's a visual that doesn't leave you quickly. Also, if one person asked me that, how many other people thought it? I'm never going to know. Either way, keep your eyes open for beautiful creatures out there, especially in front of the mirror. Uh-oh. Bye-bye.