The SAMI Project - South African Marine Invertebrates

Invertebrates: the building blocks of marine communities and ecosystems.

d3ae45a11aa4923b8363f323be4ee7e5

Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Rating2.5
VettedTrusted
Description
After Hurricane Dolly made landfall on South Padre Island, I went to Padre Island and Mustang Island to look for any critters that were brought by the hurricane. Among the findings were hundreds of Blue Button, Porpita porpita. I collected a few on the beach that were already dying or dead and losing their beautiful blue color. I took some photos of them under the microscope. Here are some of the better ones. In one of them you can see some microscopic strands sticking out of one of the tentacles. I wonder if they are nematocysts or perhaps hydroids? The photos shown here were taken under a microscope in a lab in Corpus Christi; the map shows the location where the specimens where collected. See more about Porpita at the Biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico (BioGoMx) database at: http://gulfbase.org/biogomx/biospecies.php?species=Spp-19-0054
Original URLhttp://static.inaturalist.org/photos/1120607/original.jpg?1411005541
creatorFabio Moretzsohn
publisherinaturalist
provideriNaturalist.org
Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith