Larvae Under the Lights...

I have had the great good fortune to spend much of my life in remote corners of our planet, investigating wildlife communities.  From Amazonian rainforests to subterranean rivers in Southern China to the open oceans of our planet, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have been able to spend lots of time in these haunts.  There is a quote that really struck me when I first read it:

"When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself."

- Jacques Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

I believe in the quote with every fiber of my being.  Inasmuch, I have spent most of my life photographing the unusual, the rare, and the poorly understood wildlife communities of our planet’s dark corners.  I do this to bring wildlife to the masses.  I have always wanted to bring wildlife to people who would otherwise never see it.  I want to help instill the same love of these things as I have.  I want to help develop a community-based conservation ethic by way of my photography.  I want to keep it all around.

So, one of the jobs that I have most enjoyed while part of the DEEPEND-RESTORE Team is the photography of larval forms of animals.  The diversity of shapes, sizes, colors, patterns, and body forms has changed how I view wildlife in our seas.  It's been a great ride and one for which I am incredibly grateful.  I’ve been able to see so much.

The key to this story is that by participating in multiple research trips out to sea, across decades, I have been able to observe individuals of the same species in multiple life stages – some early larval stages, some mid-larval stage, some in transition, and others as adults.  It’s the repetitive trips and the multiple opportunities to see the same species in its various life stages that has offered up unique opportunities to understand physical transitions in a species. 

Metamorphosis is our key word here.  Metamorphosis is unlike anything that humans know from doing. I believe it to be well beyond the grasp of the human experience.  And I’d like to use a common example to make my point.  Let's think about the humble frog and the newts – our amphibians. 

Most, not all, amphibians pull it off metamorphosis with perfection. Basically, everything changes.  An aquatic organism with mouth parts, designed to feed on a specific food type, will need to shed those mouth parts for a new life, feeding on entirely different food items as an adult.  Not always, but often, this means feeding on aquatic vegetation and then shifting to a life of preying on and eating other animals. Where there were no arms, legs, hands, and feet - a frog will need to adjust. Leg buds develop into fully formed hind limbs, complete with feet and toes.  Arms, hands, and fingers form beneath the skin in most frogs - only to be pushed through the body wall - emerging with fully formed structures.  What was a tail for swimming is slowly digested to feed the developmental process - tails for swimming don't have much value on land.  Gills give way to lungs (most of the time) but permeable skin dominates throughout both life stages.  Skin glands will secrete toxic substances to keep microbes at bay.  Sometimes, even the tadpoles secrete toxic substances from skin glands - limiting the number of predators that can consume them.  Post-metamorphosis, some species will even secrete materials used to slow evaporative water loss.  There are, of course, exceptions.  I don't discuss them all here.  Some frogs develop directly within the egg - only to emerge as fully formed miniatures of the adults.  Indeed, direct development is fascinating to watch.  Like its relatives, the plethodontid salamanders, there is at least one frog that doesn't develop lungs - think Borneo's Lungless Frog (Barbourula kalimantanensis).  But metamorphosis is none-the-less spectacular, even with its exceptions.  Even the eyes, skeletal systems, and digestive tracts can and do undergo significant changes - life below water to life on land poses its challenges.  I’ve always wanted to show that stage in between life stages: awkward and messy, but directed. I hope these image captured all of what it means to change into something new.

Metamorphosis is defined as follows:

met·a·mor·pho·sis

noun (Zoology)

noun: metamorphosis; plural noun: metamorphoses

(in an insect or amphibian) the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages.

Again, the hardest part in describing metamorphosis for so many species is the extreme body changes that unfold.  Think of how different a frog is to its tadpole in my example above – the two don’t look anything alike… they even feed in different ways and have vastly different diets.  It is no different with marine species that pass through larval stages.  Further, the larvae and the adult forms, often times, inhabit very different niches.  For example, the larval forms of many marine creatures live in the water column, as zooplankton.  But after metamorphosis, many of these species settle onto reefs or move to the sea floor or live along the coastline.  

In the series of subsequent images that I have provided, I hope to share with you just a few of the incredible larval stages that I’ve been lucky enough to see.  I’ve also included a composite image that I have produced from images I’ve taken of different life stages in the same species (an anglerfish). 

But the change into something new is to be celebrated- even when it is difficult and awkward.  The change might be best celebrated through this quote:

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." - Lao Tzu

It's been my honor to take these images and to share them here with you.  If I have been successful in any way, I might just help instill a little more love for marine fauna than you had before reading this!

Cheers - Danté

Image Captions:

Squid Larvae: This is a “paralarval” cephalopod (Bathothauma lyromma). “Paralarva” is a term used in zoology to describe the young of some cephalopods  The eyes out at the ends of long eye stalks is a paralarval character that is not observed in the adult form.

Larval Flatfish: In some larval fishes, part of the digestive tract develops outside of the body cavity- as with this larval flatfish.  No such arrangement is observed in the adult form.

Larval Pea-crabs: These larval “pea crabs” look more like invaders from Mars than they do real life larval crustaceans.  These larvae live in the water column and are rounded (as depicted here).  The adults typically live within the shells of live clams and other gastropods.

Anglerfish developmental series: Developmental stages of a “Humpback Anglerfish” (Melanocetus johnsonii). The stages, youngest to oldest - top to bottom, were all observed during DEEPEND-RESTORE Project research cruises on the Gulf.

Larval fish - Holocentridae: This larval Fish (Holocentridae) is equip with a “horn” – something not observed in the adult form.

Larval crustacean: This larval shrimp (a Lophogastrid larva) has a spectacular appendage off of its “nose” – not observed in the adult form.

Larval shrimp: This spectacular larval shrimp sports all kinds of colors.  It is so different from the form of the adult that many people seeing this animal for the first time have no ides that the adult and the larvae are not entirely different species.

Larval fish: This larval fish (Lavarus imperialis) only vaguely resembles the adult form and is many, many times smaller.