Making marine invertebrate collections accessible for all. 🦀🦑🦞🦐 Funded by the National Science Foundation. #diginverts #NSFfunded
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Ever wondered where Nemo lives? 🐠 In the Indo-Pacific, clownfish live with Entacmaea quadricolor (bubble-tip anemones). The anemones shelter the fish, & the fish provide the anemones nutrients and defend them from predators & parasites. Nature’s teamwork—mutualistic symbiosis!
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Naomi Rodriguez @NHMLA uses integrative taxonomy to better ID marine isopods—tiny but vital players in marine ecosystems—tackling the challenge of consistent species IDs for this group. She also made a zine to bring isopods to life!
peracarida.org/about/researc…
#WednesdayWisdom
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#FridayFunFact Sea urchins have no eyes, bones, heart, or brain — yet they can still sense light! Their whole body acts like one big eye as they use their tube feet & spines to detect changes in light & navigate their surroundings.👁️
Heliocidaris australiae, found off Australia.
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City Nature Challenge 2025! 🌱📸 Apr 25–28, join a global effort to protect biodiversity—just by taking pics of nature near you. 🦋
1️⃣ Download @iNaturalist
2️⃣ Take photos
3️⃣ Upload sightings
4️⃣ Learn as your observations get ID’d!
🌎citynaturechallenge.org/
Photos: @vijaybarve
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🌍 Earth Day @NHMLA! 🌿 #EarthDay2025
We’re still buzzing from Saturday's @NHMLA Earth Day Festival! A highlight? The MBC’s “All Things Isopods” table that had:
🔎 Live sorting
🎨 Sketching
🫙 Exploring museum collections
Let’s keep the Earth Day energy going! ✨
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Join us for a virtual tour w/ @WeDigBio! ✨🌎
On Friday, April 11, 10AM PST/1PM EST, explore rare specimens, learn from expert curators, & uncover the natural world’s secrets — all from home! 💻 Reserve your spot today for this interactive experience!
🔗eventbrite.com/e/wedigbio-wh…
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Are you a student eager to explore museum collections research?🔬✨Apply for the @NHMLA Collections Study Award by April 1. Connect with curators & collections managers first to discuss your project.
👉 nhm.org/student-collections-… #MuseumStudies #CollectionsResearch #NaturalHistory
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This incredible sea creature shares some surprising similarities with us. 🧑🤝🧑🔍 #WhatIsItWednesday #MarineBiology #Invertebrates #diginverts
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Set sail on the epic Velero expeditions in episode 3 of the #DigInDiaries. 🛳️🔍 See how @NHMLA is bringing history to life by digitizing Velero data & specimens. 🌐
Watch the full video on Instagram @diginverts: instagram.com/reel/C9QbL_xSe…
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Palaemon macrodactylus, a shrimp native to Japan, Korea, & N. China, thrives in diverse habitats worldwide due to its tolerance for moderate salinity levels, making it a highly invasive species. Researchers say ballast water from ships likely brought it to the U.S. 🚢 @VIMS_News
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#WayBackWednesday to when @AMNH received an incredible donation of over 12K fiddler crabs! 🦀 Thank you to Dr. Frank Barnwell of @umncbs, who dedicated 40+ years to researching these crustaceans. Before arriving at @amnh, @northerniowa students helped curate this collection!
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Did you know some sea anemones can swim? 🌊Meet Boloceroides mcmurrichi, one of the few anemone species that can detach from its substrate & swim away when threatened! 🏊♀️ Check out this stunning shot of its retracted tentacles & watch it glide through the water in the video.
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Started decorating yet?🎄Get inspired by decorator worms! 🪱 Meet Diopatra cuprea and Americonuphis magna, the ocean’s decorating experts. They craft their own ‘homes’ by gluing together shells, sand, algae, and even baby horseshoe crab molts with their special mucus magic.
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Check out the mantis shrimp🦐✨ It's actually not a shrimp, but a stomatopod with impressive raptorial claws that deliver punches at speeds of 10 m/s — one of the fastest movements in the animal kingdom. This strike is so fast, it can even boil water! #FunFactFriday
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Most sea urchin genetic research focuses on globe-shaped species, but thanks to Matthew Stephenson in the Greg Rouse lab @Scripps_Ocean, we have the 1st mitochondrial genome for an “irregular” species, Echinocrepis rostrata, the pyramid-shaped urchin! 🔗doi.org/10.1080/23802359.202…
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Imagine if tiny peracarids grew to the size of mythical sea beasts! From parasitic isopods to clawed amphipods, deep-sea life is as astonishing as any horror movie. Celebrate Halloween w/ "Monsters of the Deep: The Mysteries of Peracarida" by Andres Pruna🎃peracarida.org/
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What creature is this? @AMNH
Meet the zoanthids, a group of mostly colonial, filter-feeding cnidarians that settle on other marine fauna (here, a glass rope sponge). While they resemble coral polyps or sea anemones, they actually belong to their own order, Zoantharia.
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Check out the stunning bioluminescent waves lighting up Southern California! 📷 @vijaybarve #bioluminescence #glowingocean #oceanmagic #underwatermysteries
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Apply for the Student Collections Study Award @NHMLA open to undergraduate & graduate students.
Visit the link to apply: nhm.org/student-collections-…
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What is this organism?
A plant?🌱No.
An animal?🐮 Yes.
A coral?🪸Not even close!
This is a moss animal, a colonial marine invertebrate related to lamp shells (Brachiopoda) and horseshoe worms (Phoronida). @sbnature #FridayFunFact
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Who doesn’t love ice cream?🍦Meet the ice cream cone worm, Pectinaria gouldii! These builders craft intricate cone-shaped tubes just one sand grain thick! They live in tubes beneath the sediment in shallow waters, using their golden bristles to dig & their tentacles to find food.
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Episode two of the #DigInDiaries! A deep dive into digitization at @NHMLA
#diginverts #MarineScience #OceanResearch #MarineBiodiversity #MarineInvertebrates #InvertebrateCollections #MarineResearch #OceanEducation #MarineTaxonomy #MarineSpecimens
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Curious about DigIn @diginverts? Watch part 1 of the #DigInDiaries. 🪼🪸
#MarineScience #OceanResearch #MarineBiodiversity #MarineInvertebrates #InvertebrateCollections #MarineResearch #OceanEducation #MarineTaxonomy #MarineSpecimens #MarineSpecies #MarineEcology
#UnderwaterLife
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Dive into this deep-sea mystery!🔎Scientists at @MiamiRosenstiel found unknown, long, white siliceous filaments on a scalpellid and a sponge. These filaments are not part of the organisms! Can you help identify them? #MarineMystery #DeepSeaScience @univmiami
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Love marine worms?🪱 Venus's servant worms (Veneriserva pygoclava) are parasitic annelids that live inside other fuzzy annelids called sea mice (Aphrodita longipalpa). #FridayFunFact
Dissecting a sea mouse reveals an adult (yellow) & juvenile (blue) parasite! @Scripps_Ocean
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Sea monkeys, also known as fairy shrimp, help maintain the health of wetland ecosystems. But some species are nearing extinction due to habitat loss & pollution. @NHMLA vernal pools project uses eDNA to find & protect fairy shrimp habitats. #EndangeredSpeciesDay #SeaMonkeys
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Sea spiders have the unique ability to breath through their legs! Oxygen passes along the legs’ large surface area, and intestinal pouches in the legs diffuse the oxygen throughout the sea spiders' tissues. #FridayFunFact
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Today is day 1 of the #CityNatureChallenge. Help scientists better understand the biodiversity of our cities in 3 steps! @citnatchallenge
1. Find any WILD plant, animal, fungi, slime mold, or any other evidence of life in your city
2. Take a picture
3. Share via @iNaturalist
ALT Eristalis stipator, observed in Los Angeles. Photo 2024 Vijay Barve via iNaturalist Observations, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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The Venus’ flower basket is a glass sponge made up of 1000s of tiny pores, which draw in water so the sponge can feed on bacteria & plankton. This process helps keep our oceans clean as a small glass sponge reef can filter 80K liters a second & remove 90% of the water's bacteria!
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When you think of #coral, you are likely picturing Scleractinian corals, the group of true or #stonycorals. Scleractinians build hard skeletons and structures out of calcium carbonate, making them the primary reef-building corals. 🪸 #coralreef
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Student Collections Study Awards @NHMLA provide funding for undergraduate and graduate students to visit and study @NHMLA collections. Details of the award can be found here: nhm.org/student-collections-…
Deadline is April 1!
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Pasiphaeid & sergestid shrimp are valuable nutrient recyclers that sometimes feed near the seafloor and then traverse the water column, “giving back” nutrients to other parts of the column. 💩
Photo: Glass shrimp collected as a part of the @scripps_ocean MAS MBC program.
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Sea stars can regenerate their nervous systems, which is a rare ability among animals. Researchers are studying this physiology for its potential to inform the development of therapeutic treatments for human brain injuries. #SeaStarSaturday
Photo: Chrissy Piotrowski @calacademy
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Some sea stars have the uncanny abilities of autotomy (casting off a limb) & regeneration (regrowing body parts). See the tiny new arms & central disk growing from a cast off arm of Linckia multiflora that was collected during @calacademy's #HopeforReefs work in the Maldives.
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#FridayFunFact Spongia officinalis, aka the common bath sponge, is found in the Mediterranean. Humans have used this sponge as a scrubbing device for millennia! S. officinalis typically grow on sea floors, but these specimens from @AMNH grew on a piece of sunken pottery.
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#FridayFunFact @sbnature houses the complete Raymond C. Osburn collection described & noted in "Bryozoa of the Pacific Coast of America." This material includes a large number of primary type specimens, like Bientalophora cylindrica (Osburn, 1953. SBMNH 669500).
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Simple-armed basket stars resemble Tim Burton's character Beetlejuice, and not just for their white stripes. #FridayFunFact💀
These stars are miniature monsters in their own right, especially to unassuming copepods that get caught by the stars' serpentine appendages.
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Checkout this time lapse of a female rapa whelk (Rapana venosa) at @VIMS_News laying dozens of egg cases over the course of two hours. One female rapa whelk can lay up to TWO MILLION eggs per season! #MolluskMonday
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When scientists explore new deep sea habitats, most of what they collect turns out to be new or undescribed species. In 2015, a new species of coral (Crypthelia kelleyi) was accidentally collected by the ROV Deep Discoverer on a glass sponge reef. oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okean…
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If you're a picky eater, you're not alone. Did you know that worm-like, shell-less mollusks in the class Solenogastres are picky eaters? Most solenogasters are thought to only feed on one type of cnidarian. #FridayFunFact
Photo: The solenogaster Epimenia arabica by @kmkocot
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The annual Marine Science Day @VIMS_News on June 10 was a huge success! 1,000+ visitors attended to learn about current research, seine at the beach to find critters, look at live organisms and preserved specimens, chat with scientists, eat seafood, & get creative with crafts! 🎨
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CA residents, head to the coast before July 9 to participate in #SnapshotCalCoast, an annual two-week event to make & share observations about plants, animals, & seaweeds along the CA coast using the @inaturalist app. @SnapshotCACoast
See @NHMLA folks snapshotting Cabrillo Beach
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'Crabs' come in 2 infraorders, Brachyura (true crabs) and Anomura. To quickly tell whether a crab is a brachyuran or anomuran, count the pairs of prominent visible legs! If you see 4 instead of 5, that's a good sign the ‘crab’ is an anomuran. #FridayFunFact
Photo 1: @vijaybarve
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A study led by @DecimaLab out of @niwa_nz highlights the impact salp’s fast sinking fecal pellets can have on carbon export. When salps are present the biological carbon pump is more efficient, sequestering atmospheric carbon to the ocean! #RVTangaroa nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
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Crustaceans in the family Phronimidae found a bizarre way to ascend from their ancestor's benthic niche & live a pelagic lifestyle. Phronimids prey on filter-feeding gelatinous zooplankton, hollow out their bodies, & use their bodies for protection, buoyancy, & reproduction.🦐
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Sea stars are excellent at regenerating. Most can grow back a lost arm, & some species can grow an entire body back from a severed arm!⭐️But even these stars of regrowth make mistakes. Regeneration errors cause some individuals to have 1 too many or 1 too few arms. @MyFWC
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#FridayFunFact While the Portuguese man o’ war superficially resembles a jelly, it is actually a siphonophore, a colonial organism composed of small individual animals called zooids that work together as one.
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This #WormWednesday, check out 5 newly described species of deep-sea annelids from hydrothermal vents! 🪱These discoveries were based on digitized specimens housed in @scripps_ocean that were originally collected on expeditions using #HOVAlvin, #ROVJason, & #ROVSuBastian.
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Did you know that there were once land crabs in Hawaii? 🦀 Geograpsus severnsi was one of the many endemic creatures that went extinct soon after humans colonized the Hawaiian Archipelago. G. severnsi lived far inland & may have only returned to the ocean to spawn. #FridayFunFact
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Check out this 3D model of an Antarctic marine bryozoan (genus Reteporella) that was created using photogrammetry. @mccullermi
The Non-Molluscan Invertebrates team at @naturalsciences is hoping to scan a number of other specimens and make those models publicly available.
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On behalf of everyone at #DigInverts we want to wish you a #HappyEarthDay2023! Show your love for the earth and its creatures today!
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One of the special honorees of the @WRMarineSpecies top-10 marine species of 2022 was Yoda demiankoopi, a purple acorn worm from the deep Pacific described by Greg Rouse & collaborators at @Scripps_Ocean using ROVs from @SchmidtOcean & @MBARI_News.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
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Brachiopods (lamp shells) may look like bivalve mollusks, but they are actually in their own phylum! They are found exclusively in marine environments worldwide. Most did not survive the Permian extinction about 252 mya, but there are still ~400 species today. #FridayFunFact
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Happy World Wildlife Day! 🌱Find out more about this day at wildlifeday.org/en 🌍
#worldwildlifeday #worldwildlifeday2023 #unitednations #internationalholiday #animals #marineinvertebrates #diginverts
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Happy World Seagrass Day!
Seagrasses are flowering plants that grow entirely underwater. Their beds are essential habitats and sources of food for marine ecosystems. Seagrass provides 10% of the ocean's carbon storage, but only makes up 0.01% of the seafloor. #diginverts
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Did you know that Venus flytraps have a
marine counterpart? It's the Venus flytrap anemone!
These deep-sea anemones have large bilobed oral discs and tentacles arranged in two cycles forming a concave surface. #ConvergentEvolution
Photos: @NOAA, @AMNH's Estefania Rodriguez
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🚨Munidopsis girguisi was published as a new species of deep-sea squat lobster.
publish.csiro.au/IS/IS22030
@paularodflo, @CharlotteSeid, Greg Rouse, & @ggiribet used digitized specimens from @MCZHarvard & @Scripps_Ocean to make this discovery.
Photos: @SchmidtOcean @CharlotteSeid
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Get into the holiday spirit & admire the Christmas tree worm🎄. Its two feathery “crowns”, used for filter-feeding & respiration, are bright in color & decorate the coral that this worm lives in.🪸
See its intraspecific color variation. Photos: Christina Piotrowski @calacademy
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Wonder where our specimen records are headed? You can find digitized collections from the DigIn project in InvertEBase, a specimen data portal powered by Symbiota.
Photos: Symbiota Support Hub #iDigBio #Symbiota #diginverts
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Digitized specimens made it possible for researchers & collaborators at @Scripps_Ocean & @UniBonn to “cut the ribbon” in a paper describing 2 new genera and 9 new species of nemertean ribbon worms!🎀🪱
C. escarpiaphila (Photos 1 & 2) & A. dariae (3).
europeanjournaloftaxonomy.eu…
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One month ago today, the @VIMS_News Eastern Shore Lab hosted their annual Marine Life Day 🪸 which had over 400 attendees — the highest number of visitors since MLD began!
Go to our Instagram @diginverts to find out what visitors experienced on this day. Photos: Jenny Dreyer
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Did you know @ASU has a mollusk collection of approximately 140,000 specimens? It’s currently managed by a dedicated Volunteer Curator and @BioKIC_ASU staff.
Photos: Samanta Orellana
#iDigBio #Symbiota #SymbiotaSupportHub #ASUMOC
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