Final fieldtrip for the 2008 Biophilia programme

Here's a little summary from the final fieldtrip to sentosa for the biophilia programme (24th May 2008). The students have been great to work with thanks to their initiative and level of enthusiasm. (hmmm but why haven't they contributed to this blog?!?). Fellow colleagues that came for the fieldtrips made the programme successful in its own way.

We've been lucky with the tides this year and all the saturdays low tides were around 9 am so we could schedule those saturday fieldtrips.

For me again, there were new things to see (as with every fieldtrip to this spot) and this school of catfish was one. It was a tight ball and they were swimming around each other and moving as a school.


[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/haKV3YYZ89s]

I chanced upon another school of smaller catfish later and demonstrated to the students the fountain effect of how a school of fish move away from an incoming predator. See embedded video. Here, I wade towards the school of fish and through the school. Note how the school doesn't swim away but split into 2 and swim around me by first swimming away and doing a flanking turn to the outside and around me and regrouping behind me. That's apparently optimal evasion tactics from a predator... cool. I got the chance to gather the students to demonstrate this in situ, something I had learnt from Prof Munroe in Animal Behaviour class when I was in year 2 or 3 when I was an undergraduate. Those are just some of the biodiversity lessons that I never forgot. It was nice to demonstrate this to a bunch of students who may not take any Biodiversity modules as undergraduates. In fact its hard to imagine that with the ever changing syllabus to molecular biology that students will ever learn this.



Here's a mermaid's purse or more informatively, the egg that is laid by a shark, stingray and attached to seawead. The eggcase is usually washed to shore after the baby shark emerges. There are plenty of this around at the sentosa beach.



And finally, a picture of students working at the site. Its nice to see that they have learnt much from this experience. It has been a fulfilling programme and one that the teachers and I have found exciting, refreshing and something we looked forward to. Its definitely a different pedagogy, the open classroom. Some students have remarked that they enjoyed the freedom to explore and craft their own projects. Will post some reflections below as they are nice (I have omitted some parts)

~"The most memorable part of Biophilia will definitely be the day on the beach when for the first time in my life I watched 2 ‘blue-blooded’ horseshoe crabs mate. I was really surprised to be able to find such amazing creatures in Singapore, because all along I saw Singapore as a place with minimal biodiversity. This programme has thus taught me not to underestimate the biodiversity of creatures in Singapore."~

~I really enjoyed every single session of the Biophilia programme as I was working with what I enjoy and am interested in most. The fieldtrips really heightened my interest towards marine organisms and I really learnt a lot about Singapore’s shores during the trips. I have also started to fully appreciate Singapore’s biodiversity after seeing such a huge variety of organisms living on such a small stretch of beach. I used to think that Singapore does not have any sea anemones or coral reefs but I realized was very much mistaken after seeing the beautiful sea anemones on the Sentosa beach. I’m glad to know that there are such programmes to let me learn more about Singapore’s biodiversity as I feel that our biodiversity is just as important as the developments in our country. Our biodiversity is part of our environment as well as our heritage so we should treasure it as well and not cast it aside as something less important. If I have a chance I would want to go for this programme again and I hope that it will be for a longer period of time as I feel that the time period this time is too short.~

~From the fieldtrip I attended, the experience and new discoveries I made gave me a great sense of achievement. I think it is wonderful that I have had this opportunity to observe and even touch some of the organisms we found. Wading in the water and sometimes mud in search of fish, crab and whatever else we could find was truly a great experience. I am glad to have been selected to participate in this program. I never realized that the area behind underwater world had so many cool organisms despite all the times I have been to Sentosa. The thought that that little ecosystem will most likely be destroyed in the future with the ongoing construction around that area is rather depressing. As unlikely as it is, I hope that the short video that my group has produced throughout this program will achieve its purpose in increasing the awareness about the ecological value of that area, and perhaps more might learn to value this more than the monetary profits it could bring. ~

The Biophilia Programme

One fieldtrip left and a seminar series at the science centre before the Biophilia programme draws to a close for the year. Hopefully we can run it again next year. The idea is to arouse biophilia in students, who otherwise would not have an authentic experience of nature here in Urban Singapore. But its more than that. Besides the place-based learning, the students come up with their projects here and all we do as part of that process is socratic questioning. Its a bit frustrating for students and its not easy to come up with a scientific question. But we've been to the fieldsite for about 5 times already and each time we spend about 3 hours there (what a blessing to have enthusiastic and supportive colleagues taking turns or even coming regular for this). We've seen some "ecological literacy" developing so that's a nice development.



Here's a pair of anemone shrimps. We found 2 pairs on two different anemones. They are delightful creatures to watch and they are, as we found out through the weeks on the Biophilia programme, almost always there when there is a submerged carpet anemone. They are known to wait out in a nearby pool if the anemone is totally exposed during the low tide, and return again.

This is the second time I have seen it in the flesh/carapace, and they provide a nice source of distraction from the world. The seem to potter about busily around the tentacles of the anemone and its been recorded that they fend off any outsider (be it a fish) that comes close to the anemone. So the pair's highly territorial. Their almost transparent body makes them hard to spot but once you know there's a high chance of spotting them beside the nice obvious bloom of the anemone, their movements give them away. The smaller one of the pair is the guy.

For much better pictures and a sciency account go to the Annotated Budak post



Nat Low and I were debating over this row of eggs. I had roughly remembered it to be some mollusc that would lay such eggs. She, being more cephalopod-biased, suggested it was too big for small snails... well not too big for the spiral melongena I guess.

Here's a nice picture of the spiral melongena from Dai Jiao's photostream in Flickr.

Because the tide was low, we decided to hope over to another stretch of rocky beach on the southern most point of Singapore and saw this pair of horseshoe crab doing their thing. What an interesting sight for students who have not even seen the creature before, seeing the mating ritual of the horseshoe crab. I am sure they, like me before, find it interesting to know that the horseshoe crab has blue blood, as unlike us, they have copper instead of iron as the prosthetic group to carry oxygen. The blue blood is very valuable as it has anti-bacterial properties that scientists have been studying. See the youtube video here.

Darwin's first draft goes online

Darwin's first draft of his theory of evolution now goes online, now joining the 20,000 archive items in the online archive run by Cambridge University 'The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online'.

This will definitely be a valuable resource for educators and scientists alike.

For more read:
Darwin's first draft goes online

Biophilia Programme - Finding Nemo

The morning started out with a nice view of the seashore exposed by the low tide (0.3m). The sky was clear and the sound of the ebbing waves beckoned.


The students were to carry out their transect study. I was with a group of them when they set up a 40 m long line transect across the intertidal zone. It must have been one of those fulfilling days as a bio teacher. The sun, the sand and the ebbing waves washing at our ankles as we looked for yet one more creature to surprise us with its existence in its strange form. The day's new creature of the day started off with the slender seamoth.

Its not uncommon on these fieldtrips to the shore to hear students go "wow" in amazement at an entirely new creature they have seen.... Come to think of it.. how many times in our lives do we come across anything really new in the flesh.



The slender seamoth was really calm as we comtemplated it... see the shadows of our heads hovering over it as we trained camera lenses on it. We pondered over whether it was a stargazer or seawasp.

That's the 40m transect which took a group an hour plus to complete documenting the creatures they saw.


And here's a makeshift square transect that the group who had done were particularly proud of.


The low tide really exposed a lot of creatures and lots of carpet anemones were exposed in those pools. It was with Mr Nah's patience and keen eye that we spotted the prawn that was swimming within those tentacles of one. And soon enough what must have been quite the highlight of the day was to spot a clownfish, at home within the tentacle of the carpet anemone. Now, we have seen Nemo in aquarium and the movies, but to come across on in situ was a different thing all together... we all beamed at such a discovery.



It must have been on of the most fulfilling visits to that fieldsite. I think partly it could be attributed to the fact that we set up transects and had a more considered approach to our survey.



We work to the ominous backdrop of mega construction and each time I go there, I half expect the place to be cleared and cordoned off for some pointless attraction. The day that happens, I will be cynical, for I have come to know of creatures who await discovery by students.

Parasite makes ant mimic fruit

Parasites frequently modify the behavior of their hosts to encourage the infection of new hosts. For example, see this video (taken from the Planet Earth documentary) of the fungus Cordyceps that makes insects climb to the top of grass stems, and then erupts its fruiting body from the host's body, and disperses its spores over more hapless hosts from this elevated position. Yanoviak et al. (Am Nat 2008. Vol. 171, pp. 536–544; DOI: 10.1086/528968) describe a case of parasite-induced mimicry in the ant Cephalotes atratus. A nematode infection causes the gasters (rear portion of the abdomen) to become bright red and swollen, resembling a berry fruit, where normally it is black and inconspicuous. The infected gasters are also full of parasite eggs. Birds that feed on berries would then pop off these packets of parasite propagules, and pass out the eggs in their faeces. Ants congregate around bird faeces, which represent food resources to them, and collect them to feed to their brood, completing the cycle.

Here's the lesson from all this, kids: don't eat dung.

Biophilia and a Demon-haunted world

Sometime in 2006, I was looking for a seashore environment to bring students to study the intertidal zone. The Changi coast near the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal was a nice choice but there were too many sandflies. So one day, I decided to go to Sentosa with my family. The reclaimed beaches just didn't make it cos it was void of life... almost except for pesky sunbathers. I was there for about half an hour when Joshua needed to pee, so I brought him to the toilet in one of the areas in Sentosa. It happened to overlook a sandy/rocky seashore beach which happened to be exposed as the tide was low. That was the beginning of many visits to the area.

Beautiful Life




The tide was low and the waters just reached ankle height even when we waded far from shore... I was instantly brought back to my childhood days of beach exploration when my parents used to bring me to the beach and I would explore the rocky areas and look at the rock pools, fascinated by the creatures like hermit crabs and little fish that got trapped with the outgoing tide. Josh, Matt and I waded in the waters for about an hour or more. We met a carpet anemone, sea cucumbers, an octopus (would you imagine that!), a leaf porter crab. Every now and then Josh and Matt would be amazed at the little crab who would hide under a leaf... how curious it was.. and I was there to show it to them. We spent the remainder of the time chasing crabs, fast swimming flower crabs that darted about in the surprisingly clear waters... The kids' amazement and wonderment were enough to make me satisfied. It was an enrichment class, or place-based learning experience, well call it what you will but we totally were in the flow (see "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Csíkszentmihályi")

Just some of the beauties at the beach area.






Naturally I was excited about this and decided that this would be the place to bring some students to experience it as a fieldtrip. After assessing the safety and planning and making sure that the students wouldn't affect the environment, we went there and had our fieldtrip. We caught several creatures, displayed them in tanks and released them back to their habitats. The feedback was good and generally, most would not have experience that kind of environment here. A year later we brought another batch of students there and the same "magic" was felt. I had hoped to instil some kind of love for the environment and creatures in this students. This year, I have expanded the fieldtrip to an enrichment programme called the Biophilia Programme where students will propose and study the ecology of the site to assess biodiversity and ecology there with minimal impact.

However, the last field trip there last week left me with a heavy heart. Just a few hundred metres away, there was a big barge and major construction works. I guess for the resort world. Was this place going to be affected, will it totally go? Can the programme still continue... will Joshua and Matt see Mr Octopus? My heart sank further when I realised that the patch of halophila (or sea grass) that was verdant the year before had now been razed to the muddy substrate.. all the sea grass and sea weed was gone. Those seaweeds and seagrass were home to the octopus, the carpet anemone and the many leaf porter crabs my sons and I had discovered by flipping the the floating leaves. They were now gone. Naturally I am upset... depressed if you will. Even more so when I read this post by Rambling Leaf monkey... here.

This rich patch of halophila and seaweeds is now gone...


I can't reconcile with the fact that the rocky shore habitats at Sentosa may be gone along with its denizens, the octopus, the curious leaf porter crabs, the many scurrying crabs, baby squids, the file fishes, the carpet anemone, the sea cucumbers will be gone... Will there be an Oceanarium there? Will it be part of the habitat destruction? Already underwaterworld puts me off with the lonely dugong and a gazillion fish swimming in what seems to be overcrowded tanks. Honestly, I think picking up some hermit crab along a rocky shore is more authentic. I can't help but feel the greed of society impinging on God's creation or mother nature, whatever floats your boat. Will Sentosa become more artificial again. I had hopes that all the rocky shores might be left unharmed and I hope that they will be, but the razed patch of seagrass has me thinking deep.

In this age of science, I would think that as Carl Sagan, puts it albeit a little righteously, that Science will be a candle in the dark. Its a demon-haunted world in a different sense today where biodiversity is concerned. Look at over-fishing, pollution, animal slaughter in the abbatoirs. No longer are people ignorant, they just turn a blind eye. I hope that this isn't the case for the Sentosa management and that the people at Sentosa realise that the rocky shores are precious and hopefully, hopefully, any biodiversity surveys of the rocky shores there will be a candle in the dark for them...

Synchotron Radiation Tomography Illuminates Hidden Bugs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7324564.stm

We've all seen pictures of ancient insects trapped in the golden, honey-like transparency of amber. Amber is fossilized tree resin, that when it was formed, trapped and preserved the form of insects and other small animals that it flowed over. But much amber is cloudy, and short of breaking it open, there's not been anyway to look inside to see what fossils might be found within. Now, scientists at the European Synchotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France have used high-intensity X-ray radiation to peek inside the amber and through computerized tomography (the same method as CT scans used in medicine) reconstructed 3-D images of fossils found in the amber. This was previously not possible with conventional X-ray sources. What's even neater - they use a method called 3D printing to produce a plastic resin scaled up model of the fossils in the amber, so palaeontologists have something tangible to manipulate and observe, rather than just pictures on a screen. Really amazing!

Moose antlers help hearing

The big antler racks of moose may help males amplify sounds to better locate females:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/mar/21/medicalresearch.animalbehaviour

Researchers used a set of Alaskan moose antlers, and placed a prop ear and a microphone between them, and measured the sound reaching the microphone with and without the antlers. With the antlers, head-on sound was amplified by 19%, but when the antlers were turned away from the sound, it was decreased by 21%, suggesting that they help in direction finding, just like how our external ears (auricles) are directed towards our front.