Course Announcement:
INVERTEBRATE EMBRYOLOGY AND LARVAL BIOLOGY FOR REEF AQUARISTS
Duration: 10 Weeks
Starting Date: 17 January, 2010
Required Enrollment:
For the course to proceed, I will need 10 enrolled (paid-up) students by 10 January, 2010. Students may enroll by sending me an email at:
ronshimek@wispwest.net, and by depositing $150 (Of this, $125 goes to me, $25 goes to The
Reef Stewardship Foundation) in my PayPal account. Should not enough people enroll by 10 January, the registration fee, less any PayPal charges will be refunded.
Once the course has started, no refunds will be issued.
Text:
Strathmann, M. F. 1987. Reproduction And Development Of Marine Invertebrates Of The Northern Pacific Coast. University of Washington Press. Seattle. 670 pp.
Available at Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/Reproduction-Development-Invertebrates-Northern-Pacific/dp/0295965231
Recommended Text/Reference:
Ruppert, E. E, R. S. Fox and R. D. Barnes. 2003. Invertebrate Zoology, A Functional Evolutionary Approach. 7th Ed. Brooks/Cole-Thomson Learning. Belmont, CA. xvii +963 pp.+ I1-I26pp.
This text will not be “necessary” for the course, but it will be
REALLY helpful to have it.
Most of the course content will come from original text/lecture essays that I will write.
Optional (Desired) Equipment:
Digital camera (3.3 Megapixel or better) and ability to upload photos.
Microscopes… If you have living animals or larvae, microscopes are a necessity. If you are just “learning,” they are not.
Prerequisite or Necessary Background Knowledge:
College Introductory Biology or sufficient ability and desire to be able to go to references and find out terms.
Course Level:
The lectures for this course will written be at about the 2nd or 3rd year level of college. I will assume you have the ability to read and understand college level material. I am not going to “dumb down” the course material.
Course Format:
Every Monday, I will email the week’s lecture/essay and optional laboratory instructions to the students. This will involve up to 25 pages of material. We will have a private Reef Stewardship Foundation forum. All students may upload and discuss questions on that forum. I will typically check several times during the day to answer and address questions. Each Friday, I will upload a short quiz. The answers to the quiz will be uploaded the following Monday.
I estimate each week may have up to 50 pages of assigned readings. If it has been a while since you have been in school… this reading may be difficult, it isn’t like reading a novel.
You will encounter a
LOT of jargon terms. I will indicate some appropriate dictionaries and definition sources.
The laboratory exercises in the course will consist of observations and/or experiments done in a standard reef tank. These exercises will not harm any organisms in the tanks.
Course Coverage:
The course will discuss the reproduction and development of invertebrates, in general, with an emphasis whenever possible upon coral reef animals. However, relatively little specific work has been done with coral reef invertebrates, so the student must expect a lot of non-coral reef examples.
The fundamental question asked will be: “How does this animal (any animal) go from adult to a juvenile capable of growing into an adult?” or phrased a bit differently, “How does an adult recreate another adult?”
The secondary question to be addressed will be: “How can I spawn and raise these animals?” I will detail some techniques and
We will cover all the invertebrates likely to be found in marine aquaria, and a few others besides.
Course Syllabus (Subject To Change As The Class Progresses)
Week 1 – Introduction; Materials, Methods, Course Rules, Definitions of Embryos, Larvae.
Spawning Preparation and Initiation. Techniques to study and prepare animals for spawning.
Week 2 - Spawning, Embryogenesis.
Week 3 - Early Larval Development; Lineage of Radiates and Deuterostomes (Cnidarians, Echinoderms, Chordates)
Week 4 - Later Larval Development; Lineage of Radiates and Deuterostomes (Cnidarians, Echinoderms, Chordates)
Week 5 – Metamorphosis and Settlement – Lineage of Radiates and Deuterostomes (Cnidarians, Echinoderms, Chordates)
Week 6 - Early Larval Development; Lineage of Lophotrochozoans (Annelids, Mollusks, Other Groups)
Week 7 – Later Larval Development; Lineage of Lophotrochozoans (Annelids, Mollusks, Other Groups)
Week 8 - Metamorphosis and Settlement - Lineage of Lophotrochozoans (Annelids, Mollusks, Other Groups)
Week 9- Early Larval Development of Arthropods
Week 10 – Later Larval Development of Arthropods, Including Settlement and Metamorphosis.
Instructor Qualifications
It is vital on courses such as this that the students are aware of the instructor’s level of expertise:
I have taught marine-oriented invertebrate zoology courses at:
The University of Alaska, Anchorage.
Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre (Bamfield Marine Station prior to 2002), Bamfield, British Columbia, Canada. (Operated by a consortium of western Canadian universities)
University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories, Friday Harbor, Washington.
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Hatfield Marine Station, Oregon State University, Newport, Oregon.
Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana.
Additionally, I have done research into and using invertebrate larvae, and have published several articles specifically dealing either entirely or in part with invertebrate larvae and reproduction:
Shimek, R. L. 1981.
Neptunea pribiloffensis (Dall 1919) and
Tealia crassicornis (Müller, 1776), On a snail's use of babysitters. The Veliger. 24:62-66.
Shimek, R. L. 1983. Biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. I.
Ophiodermella. Malacologia. 23:281-312.
Shimek, R. L. 1983. Biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. II.
Oenopota. The Journal of Molluscan Studies. 49:149-163.
Shimek, R. L. 1983. The biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. III. The habitat and diet of
Kurtziella plumbea (Hinds 1843). The Veliger. 26:10-17.
Shimek, R. L. 1984. The biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. IV. Shell morphology and
sexual dimorphism in
Aforia circinata (Dall, 1873). The Veliger. 26:258-263.
Shimek, R. L. 1986. The biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. V. Demersal Development, synchronous settlement and other aspects of the larval biology of
Oenopota levidensis. International Journal of Invertebrate Reproduction and Development. 10:313-337.
Shimek, R. L., D. Fyfe, L. Ramsey, A. Bergey, J. Elliott, and S. Guy. 1984. A note on the spawning of the north Pacific market squid
Loligo opalescens (Berry 1911) in Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, Canada. Fishery Bulletin. 82:445-446.
Anderson, R. A., and R. L. Shimek. 1994. Field observations of
Rossia pacifica (Berry, 1911) egg masses. The Veliger. 37:117-119.
Additionally, I assisted in the compilation of data and techniques for the standard reference on marine invertebrate reproduction; wherein I am cited as a chapter advisor for Prosobranch gastropods and Asteroid echinoderms:
Strathmann, M. F. 1987. Reproduction and development of marine invertebrates of the Northern Pacific coast. University of Washington Press. Seattle. 670 pp.
Finally, I have assisted in the research of several other scientists as they addressed questions of larval biological importance. From this assistance, I have learned many techniques and a lot of information about such animals.
If you have any questions about the course, please either post them in this forum or contact me at the email address above.
I hope to see you in the course. 
