“Thus organisms and environments are both causes and effects

in a coevolutionary process.”

—Richard C. Lewontin in The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment.

Friday, February 16, 2018

My first time recording drilling?

In my continued effort to record dogwhelk rasping, I think I finally got a dogwhelk to drill a mussel glued to my hydrophone! Previously, the dogwhelks drilled all the other mussels in the tank, but not the only mussel that we wanted them to drill.

We've captured this process using time-lapse photography, and here are a couple pictures: one with the lights on during the daytime and one with them off and a red light on at night.



Here's what you're seeing: The cord is connected to the hydrophone, which is a black puck-like object. The hydrophone is on top of a black mussel, and the dogwhelk is the grey-white thing on the mussel. This is easier to see in the not-red photo. There is also a smaller mussel just to the right of the larger mussel with the dogwhelk on it. The smaller mussel is only there because it was attached to the large one and I didn't want to disturb it by pulling it apart.  Finally, there is a thermometer in there with them, and the tank itself is in a cooler.

We have yet to go through the audio files to see what we can hear, but at least this time we know the snail was drilling in a quiet room, so the odds are in our favor to hear some rasps!

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