Earlier Work, continued

Since this is a blog, I guess I won't try to rewrite the earlier post, but I do need to get to the point rather immediately.

On the night I went with my Pingelapese fishermen friends to Toguan Bay, on the South West of Guam, a rather amazing event was observed. All of those months breaking off pieces of Millepora spp., filing them away (having written dates and places of collection on the fragments with an ordinary graphite pencil), I had expected to do some kind of vaguely imagined time series statistical analysis on the collection, in order to ferret out any periodic signals of reproductive activity. Millepora spp. exhibit ampullae when medusae are developing, so presumeably the presence or absence of ampullae would constitute a signal of physiological activities. Many questions remained unresolved, but the idea was to collect fragments and make the study later on. Nothing could be simpler. Right?

Well on that night I observed something I hadn't anticipated, even in my wildest hypothesizing: all along the reef, numerous colonies of Millepora platyphylla were found to be liberating medusae that night, in synchrony. I don't remember clearly (in Feb 2008) whether I collected some, but probably I did, and probably I saw medusae on that night in a ziploc bag. Whatever transpired on that night, the next day I visited several sites to check whether Millepora sp. on other reefs were also in the same condition.

I observed that the reproducing colonies had turned a darker brown. Little white circles were peppered all over them---marks of receding lips of the ampullae as they decalicified.

After this breakthrough, my focus shifted somewhat. I continued to monitor and collect, focusing almost exclusively on Millepora platyphylla. I enrolled in an independent study of microtechnique with Professor Doug Smith the following year, and was able to incorporate microscopical study of Millepora tissues during the 1995-1996 academic year, for seasonal reproductive events beginning in April 1986.

More recollections to follow.

AED