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Biology 152 Saturday field trip to Dana Pt., Orange Co., CA, October 29, 2016

tentatively identified calyptraeid snail, Crepidula onyx, surrounded by the volcano keyhole limpet, Fissurella volcano	juvenile conspicuous chiton, Stenoplax conspicua	banded brittlestar, Ophionereis annulata
-	juvenile conspicuous chiton, Stenoplax conspicua	-
juvenile green abalone, Haliotis fulgens	-	-
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surfgrass, Phyllospadix torreyi, underwater	-	-
a small adult wavy turban snail, Megastraea undosa	The two small snails, perhaps Chrysallida cincta, are ectoparasitic pyramidellid gastropods that are found on multiple local gastropod hosts, including the wavy turban snail. For an interesting account of the reproduction and natural history of these pyramidellids, by Patrick LaFollete, see here.	-
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-	conspicuous chiton, Stenoplax conspicua	-
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Lepidozona pectinulata	The suckers of an octopus arm can barely be made out. I was attempting to photograph this octopus when all of a suddenly grabbed my underwater camera. We had a surprisingly competitive tug-of-war for at least a couple of minutes. If you are one of the students who got a video with your phone, please give me a copy.	conspicuous chiton, Stenoplax conspicua
Lepidozona pectinulata	Volcano limpet, Fissurella volcano, with markings that correspond to the named variety, Fissurella volcano crucifera, which is rightfully considered to be a synonym of F. volcano.	-
Fissurella volcano	Lepidozona pectinulata	-
A surprisingly large aggregation of the small predatory snail, Alia carinata-- were they aggregating to breed?	-	-
An unusually large Keep's chiton, Cyanoplax keepiana	-	-
conspicuous chiton, Stenoplax conspicua	-	Perhaps a Tegula eiseni juvenile on the girdle of a conspicuous chiton.
-	Tidepool ghost shrimp, Neotrypaea biffari (formerly Callianassa affinis)	Acanthochitona avicula
-	I wondered what would happen when the much larger Stenoplax conspicua encountered the Acanthochitona avicula. Perhaps those bundles of spines have a defensive function. When they met, the conspicuous chiton did not seem to hardly notice.	-
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The pinkish black sea hare egg masses are attached to a rock overhang with several black sea hares, Aplysia vaccaria, somewhat hidden under the same rock. We found multiple such aggregations with as many as about 10 black sea hares in a single aggregation. The interesting detail was that we had not seen any in the same vicinity the previous day, implying that these black sea hares had aggregated since the previous day for a mating frenzy.	-	-
-	-	The giant keyhole limpet, Megathura crenulata, is more common subtidally, and ones found fairly high in the intertidal would probably prefer to return to the subtidal.
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-	Codium fragile, known commonly as dead man's fingers, is a green alga with no asexual (sporophyte) stage, with male or female gametes produced on separate plants (Wikipedia). Here it is above the brown alga rockweed, Silvetia compressa.	brittlestar arms underwater
Aplysia vaccaria (black sea hare) can get up to 14 kg (31 lbs.), according to Wikipedia, which I have read claims that this species holds the record of being the heaviest gastropods body, not including a shell, by wet weight.	-	-
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