Marine Invertebrates of Cape Cod

PLEASE NOTE: MOST LINKS NO LONGER WORK FROM THIS WEBPAGE

Marine Invertebrates
of Cape Cod

WHOI/MIT Joint Program Class 7.435
Fall Semester 2002

Instructors: Stace Beaulieu (AOPE) and Ken Halanych, Larry Madin, and Lauren Mullineaux (Biology)
T.A.: Rob Jennings (Biology)

Updated 6 Nov. 2002 by Stace Beaulieu (stace@whoi.edu)
Best viewed with Internet Explorer

**Course Description**
This course is a hands-on introduction to the marine invertebrates inhabiting the waters off Cape Cod. We will combine lectures, field collections, and laboratory observation to familiarize students with the diversity of invertebrates in the local region and explore selected aspects of their function, ecology, and evolution. Field studies will include trips to marsh, estuarine, and rocky intertidal habitats and a cruise to subtidal environments. Class meetings will be concentrated in September and October when the animals are plentiful, the water warm, and the weather good. Students will present subjects orally in class, conduct a field or laboratory research project, and participate in a lab practicum . Textbooks will be available in the reading room at Redfield and will be supplemented with guides to local fauna.

**Class Calendar (see description of each class below)**
Week no.	Dates	Tues. 11:00-12:30	Thurs. 11:00-12:30	Chapters in Pechenik text	Websites
1	5 Sep.	No class	L1 (Redfield 2-04)	2	phylogenetic systematics , Tree of Life
2	10, 12 Sep.	Lab for L1	L2	4, 8	Porifera , Platyhelminthes , Nemertea: 1 , 2 , Nematoda , meiofauna: 1 , 2 , 3
3	17, 19 Sep.	F1	L3	14	Arthropoda , The Crustacean Society
4	24, 26 Sep.	P1 (squid , nudibranch ), F2 (postponed to Fri. 10 a.m.)	L4	12	Scaphopoda , Cephalopoda , bivalves on Cape Cod
5	1, 3 Oct.	P2 (bamboo worm , tunicates ), F3	L5	13	Annelida , Annelid Resources Homepage
6	8, 10 Oct.	F4	L6	20	Echinodermata , echinoderms on Tree of Life
7	15, 17 Oct.	Holiday	F5
8	22, 24 Oct.	P3 (introduced tunicate ), S1	L7	6, 7	Cnidaria , Scyphozoa of Woods Hole , Ctenophora
9	29, 31 Oct.	L8	S2	19, 21, 22	Bryozoa , Hemichordata , Urochordata
10	5, 7 Nov.	Lab practicum Lab notebooks due	Research papers due

Key: F = field trip, L = lab/lecture, P = students present a published paper, S = students present their own research
***Classroom location: Loeb 307 at MBL***
***Field trips cancelled due to weather will be held on Friday of that same week.***

In general, field trip (F) classes will start with 10-min student presentations of papers from the literature (P) and conclude with a 1-hr excursion to local areas. Lab/lecture (L) classes will involve 1/2-hr of hands-on observations in the lab, followed by a 1-hr lecture. Two class sessions are set aside for 30-min student presentations of original research projects (S), and the final class session will be an end-of-semester lab practicum . We will meet a total of 17 times over the ten weeks, but 5 of these class periods will be < 1 hr.

Field trips:
F1 : Walk on Woodneck Beach at low tide (beach and rocky intertidal)
F2 : Snorkeling trip to none-other-than our own Iselin Pier pilings
F3 : Sippewissett Marsh at low tide
F4 : Morning cruise on R/V Gemma in Vineyard Sound ***Note: we will meet at 8:45 a.m. at the dock behind the Marine Resources Center (MRC) . When we return to the dock ~11 a.m., we will have a guided tour of the MRC.***
F5 : Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve ***Note: we will leave WHOI at 10:30 a.m. to meet at Mashpee Town Beach parking lot at 11 am. ***
Plus two optional snorkeling trips:
1) Sunday 29 Sep. meet at Quissett Harbor parking area at 8:30 a.m. for snorkeling at the Knob .
2) Wednesday 2 Oct. meet at Nobska Lighthouse at 8:30 a.m. for snorkeling at Nobska Beach .
Check tides .

Other local excursions of interest to our class:
- Sun., 15 Sept., 1 pm: Plant and animal life along Cape Cod Bay. A walk offered by the new Sandwich Visitor Center on the Cape Cod Canal.
- Sat., 28 Sept., 2 pm: Buzzards Bay ecology. Lecture at Falmouth Public Library by director of Buzzards Bay Coalition.
- Fri., 4 Oct., 11:30 - noon: EstuaryLive program on Buzzards Bay (an interactive "field trip" on the Internet!).
- Sun., 13 Oct., 1 pm: Plant and animal life along Cape Cod Bay. A walk offered by the new Sandwich Visitor Center on the Cape Cod Canal.

Lectures (given by):
L1 (Halanych): Introduction to invertebrate phyla, with hands-on sorting of a variety of habitat samples
L2 (Beaulieu): Porifera, Platyhelminthes, and brief overview of Nemertea and Nematoda
L3 (Beaulieu): Arthropoda
L4 (Mullineaux): Mollusca
L5 (Halanych): Annelida and Sipuncula
L6 (Beaulieu): Echinodermata
L7 (Madin): Cnidaria and Ctenophora
L8 (Halanych, Madin): Lophophorates, Hemichordata, and Urochordata

**Grading**
40%	Independent research project. The project may be any original work involving a field or laboratory study of local inverebrate fauna (laboratory projects limited to whole organism studies such as behavior, feeding ecology, or physiology). We prefer that students work together in pairs for these projects. Example field studies would be: mark-recapture study of gastropods on rocks at Woodneck Beach, weekly survey of residents in delimited area on Iselin pier piling. The oral presentation (S1 , S2 above) may include hands-on activities in addition to the typical AGU-type presentation format. The written report will be in typical (but abbreviated) manuscript format: abstract, intro, methods, results, discussion, and references.
20%	Oral presentation (P1, P2, P3 above) of a paper from the published literature that describes some aspect of the ecology or evolution of a local invertebrate species. Prior to field trip F1, Beaulieu will present the first paper as an example: Cohen, A.L. et al. 2002. The effect of algal symbionts on the accuracy of Sr/Ca paleotemperatures from coral. Science 296: 331-333. PDF Other examples would be: papers on the biomedical relevance of local horseshoe crabs, fisheries research on clam or scallop populations, larval settlement of local fauna, bioluminescence of local ctenophores, or seasonal strategies of zooplankton in local waters. This ~10-min presentation will be somewhat informal (like show-and-tell), involving maybe a figure or two from the manuscript. P1: papers on squid and nudibranch (PDF documents). P2: papers on bamboo worm and tunicates (PDF documents). P3: paper on introduced tunicate species (PDF document).
20%	Class participation. During each of the 5 field trips, one of the 5 students will act as "scribe," recording notes and a list of organisms/samples collected. These notes will be submitted within a day or two to Stace who will prepare a webpage for each field trip, including the notes and any digital photos. During each lab session, each student will be assigned a particular body system (for example the reproductive or circulatory system) to learn somewhat in-depth.
10%	Notebook with observations from field trips and laboratory investigations of specimens.
10%	End-of-semester, general lab practicum for identification of local organisms and their body systems.

Textbooks:
Our reference throughout the course: Pechenik, J.A. 2000. Biology of the Invertebrates, 4th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. (I purchased a used copy at amazon.com.)
Other references available in the Redfield Reading Room:
- Anderson, D.T., ed. 1998. Invertebrate Zoology. Melbourne: Oxford UP.
- Brusca, R.C. and Brusca, G.J. 1990. Invertebrates. Sunderland: Sinauer.
- Meglitsch, P.A. 1972. Invertebrate Zoology, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP.
- Ruppert, E.E. and Barnes, R.D. 1994. Invertebrate Zoology, 6th ed. Fort Worth: Saunders.

Other references for field trips/lab classes:
- Abbott, R.T. and Morris, P.A. 1995. A Field Guide to Shells: Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and the West Indies, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (From Falmouth Public Library)
- Doris, E. 1993. Invertebrate Zoology. New York: Thames and Hudson. Produced in association with the Children's School of Science, Woods Hole. (From Falmouth Public Library)
- Freeman, W.H. and Bracegirdle, B.1971. An Atlas of Invertebrate Structure. London: Heinemann Educational Books.
- Giambarba, P. What is it? ...at the Beach on Cape Cod and the Islands. Scrimshaw Press.
- Gosner, K.L. 1971. Guide to Identification of Marine and Estuarine Invertebrates: Cape Hatteras to the Bay of Fundy. New York: Wiley.
- Gosner, K.L. 1978. A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Heuer, R.J. 1970. Exploring for Sea Shells on Martha's Vineyard. Felix Neck Wildlife Trust, Vineyard Haven. (From Falmouth Public Library)
- Hilgard, G.H., ed. 1987. Observing Marine Invertebrates: Drawings from the Laboratory. Stanford: Stanford UP.
- Martinez, A.J. 1999. Marine Life of the North Atlantic: Canada to New England. Camden: Down East Books.
- Meinkoth, N.A. 1981. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Seashore Creatures. New York: Knopf.
- Niesen, T.M. 1982. The Marine Biology Coloring Book. New York: Barnes and Noble. (Seriously, this book has useful drawings.)
- Pollock, L.W. 1998. A practical guide to the marine animals of the northeastern north America. Rutgers UP, New Brunswick. (Students found this useful to identify local fauna.)
- Smith, R.I. 1964. Keys to Marine Invertebrates of the Woods Hole Region. Contribution No. 11, Systematics-Ecology Program, MBL.
- Wallace, R.L. and Taylor, W.K. 1989. Invertebrate zoology: a laboratory manual, 5th ed. Prentice-Hall.
- Weiss, H.M. 1995. Marine Animals of Southern New England and New York: Identification Keys to Common Nearshore and Shallow Water Macrofauna. Bulletin 115 of the State Geological and Natural History Survey of Connecticut. (EXCELLENT source of information about local fauna, used by MRC divers.)
- Zinn, D.J. 1984. Marine Mollusks of Cape Cod. Natural History Series No. 2, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. (From Falmouth Public Library)

Invertebrate phylogeny:
Quite a revolution in understanding the phylogeny of invetebrates has occurred over the past decade, due mainly to comparing sequences from 18S rDNA. A revised "Tree of Life" and quite a few recent references are listed on the following website: http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html

Other interesting websites:
INCREDIBLE class website for invertebrates course at University of Alberta (includes animations)
Cape Cod Museum of Natural History
Cape Cod National Seashore
Great newspaper article about shore life on Cape Cod
Electronic Atlas of Cape Cod
MBL Marine Resource Center catalog with photos of local species: http://www.mbl.edu/animals/index.html
Unfinished keys to invertebrate species of the Woods Hole area: http://hermes.mbl.edu/BiologicalBulletin/keys.html
Massachusetts volunteer marsh monitoring program
New England Aquarium
Smithsonian Department of Invertebrate Zoology
Census of Marine Life OBIS

Click to go to Stace's homepage