UK

Hide the fry, make sure they are tucked away good and tight. The boogie man of shrimp has come to town. This time it has selected Britain.

Britain appears to be under siege from a battalion of what appear to be killer shrimp.

This hungry invader, known as Dikerogammarus villosus, has been found by fishermen at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire.

These shrimp, which are much larger than the shrimp native to Britain, come from Eastern Europe but have been steadily making their way westward, presumably looking for the buffet, for the past 10 years.

These invaders are aggressive hunters, and are feeding on the native freshwater shrimp, damselflies, small fish and water boatmen, and are poised to turn the local food chain on its head.

Often the shrimp kill just for the sport of it, and can rapidly take over lakes and rvers.

They aren’t a danger to local drinking water supplies, however fishermen have been warned to double check for the sneaky buggers so as to not aid in their spreading.

Researchers are taking the threat very seriously, and are now testing the water to see how widespread the problem is, and how to put a clamp on it.

Seems to me a lot of invasive species are making their ways into places they shouldn’t.. Global Warming? Or something more sinister? Either way, looks like Britain might be poised for a huge shrimp fry.

Above you can see a fascinating video of squat Urchin shrimp and below you find some basic information about this tiny shrimp.

The squat Urchin shrimp, known in scientific circles as Gnathophylloides mineri, is quite a fascinating invertebrate that many aquarists would often look over, or even never see.

This fascinating little creature is only milometers in length, and it survives in its own little world, not seeming to care about how the rest of the Sea Urchins live. These Sea Urchins actually live ON TOP of other Sea Urchins!

The Squat Urchin Shrimp is incredibly tiny, often never reaching more than 6mm in length, and it often orients itself parallel with their hosts spines, which not only protects it from becoming lunch for some other sea critter, but also makes it nigh on impossible to see, some would even say it’s effectively invisible to the naked eye. Colonies of these little guys often have numbers ranging from a few to a half dozen will share the same host Sea Urchin. Not only does it seek protection from its hosts spines, it actually feeds on them, proving once again just how successful this tiny creature is at surviving. This is a rather odd kind of parasitism, as it does not have any ill effects for the host.

The Squat Urchin Shrimp also will take every chance they get to feed upon the detritus that the host sea urchin picks up off the ocean floor on it’s travels.

The amazing eyes found on the mantis shrimp may inspire a new generation of CD:s and DVD:s, according to a new study from the University of Bristol.

Odontodactylus scyllarus, a species of mantis shrimp living on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, has the most complex vision system known to science and can see in twelve colours as opposed to the human eye which only sees in three. As if this wasn’t enough, Odontodactylus scyllarus can also distinguish between different forms of polarized light.

The eyes of this mantis shrimp are equipped with special light-sensitive cells that work like the quarter-wave plates found in CD and DVD players; they can rotate the plane of the oscillations of a light wave as it travels through. Thanks to this feature, the mantis shrimp is capable of converting linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa.

The design and mechanism of the quarter-wave plate in the mantis shrimp’s eye outperforms anything manmade. While the quarter-wave plates found in CD and DVD players tend to work well for one colour of light only, the mantis shrimp can convert light across the whole visible spectrum, i.e. from infra-red to nearly ultra-violet.

“What’s particularly exciting is how beautifully simple it is,” said Dr Roberts, lead author of the article. “This natural mechanism, comprised of cell membranes rolled into tubes, completely outperforms synthetic designs. It could help us make better optical devices in the future using liquid crystals that have been chemically engineered to mimic the properties of the cells in the mantis shrimp’s eye.”

How the mantis shrimp benefits from having this ability remains unknown, but polarization vision is sometimes used by animals to secretly communicate within their own species without catching the attention of predators. Also, it might make it easier for the mantis shrimp to see under water, which would come in handy when hunting for prey.

The research was carried out at the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences in the UK in collaboration with researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA.

The paper was published in Nature Photonics on October 25.

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2009.189.html

A six-month long investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has led to the arrest of seven adults and one juvenile in Tampa. The arrested persons are believed to have been involved in various illegal activates concerning marine life, including catching protected sharks, sea horses, peppermint shrimp and bay scallops in Floridian waters, and exporting illegally obtained marine life to Europe. They are also suspected of having sold bait fish and bait shrimp as food for human consumption.

According to the FWC, the ring is believed to have operated for at least five years before attracting the attention of FWC. The ring lost a lot of animals due to poor maintenance, but the FWC still believes the group managed to sell $600,000 worth of peppermint shrimp alone.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came into existence on July 1, 1999. The Investigations Section of the commission conducts both overt (uniform) and covert (plainclothes) investigations, and one of their tasks is to target hard-core commercial violators by conducting long-term undercover investigations. In 2003, the Investigations Section made 554 arrests/warnings and seized 130 illegally possessed specimens of fish and wildlife including a cougar, tigers, leopards, primates, exotic deer, venomous reptiles, protected birds and exotic aquatic species.