{"id":648,"date":"2008-09-29T21:49:41","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T04:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=648"},"modified":"2008-09-29T21:49:41","modified_gmt":"2008-09-30T04:49:41","slug":"whos-at-home-in-a-holdfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2008\/09\/29\/whos-at-home-in-a-holdfast\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s at Home in a Holdfast?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A kelp holdfast - home sweet home?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Erin Loury<\/a>, Ichthyology Lab<\/p>\n

\"Erin<\/a>
Erin Loury<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I got to play evil landlord the other day and evicted a bunch of little critters from their home (proving that even marine invertebrates are not immune to housing woes\u2026).\u00a0 I was on the hunt for some specimens that might be prey items for the gopher rockfish, which I\u2019m studying for my thesis.\u00a0 Someone suggested I seek out the creepy crawly snacks where they live \u2013 holed up in a kelp holdfast.<\/p>\n

\"A
A whole mess of tenants was living inside!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A holdfast <\/a>keeps a towering kelp plant anchored firmly to the sea floor.\u00a0 It may look like a giant root ball, but its many fingers don\u2019t suck up nutrients and water like true roots do in land plants.\u00a0 They do, apparently, make a great high-density high rise for little crabs, brittle stars, and more.<\/p>\n

While hacking open the basketball-sized mass of slippery tubes, I expected to find maybe a dozen animals or so \u2013 but I tallied up some 85 residents! Crabs, brittle stars, polychaetes (worms), urchins, shrimp, you name it.\u00a0 I was so jazzed to dig up a handful of these little peanut worms (also called sipunculids<\/a>).\u00a0 They have a long proboscis that they can actually turn inside out and tuck up inside themselves!\u00a0 And aren\u2019t they just so fat and cute?<\/p>\n

\"Peanut
Peanut worms in a jam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What do you think makes a holdfast such a great home?\u00a0 Post a comment and let us know what you think!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab I got to play evil landlord the other day and evicted a bunch of little critters from their home (proving that even marine invertebrates are not immune to housing woes\u2026).\u00a0 I was on the hunt for some specimens that might be prey items for the gopher rockfish, which I\u2019m studying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-invertebrates"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}