Behind this incredible method of hunting are the animal kingdom’s most complex eyes, peepers so amazingly evolved that their sophistication seems damn near unnecessary. (That’s me being hyperbolic. They’re anything but unnecessary, of course. Animals don’t just waste energy and resources building worthless features.)

As with bees or flies or crabs, they are compound eyes, but unlike those creatures, mantis shrimp “have a very unusual adaptation in that multiple parts of the same eye view the same point in space,” said biologist Tom Cronin of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “which is sort of like having multiple eyes in one, in a way.” Whereas we use two eyes to judge distance, mantis shrimp can do that with a single eye.

Some mantis shrimp species also have the most complex set of color receptors of any animal on Earth, a total of 16 classes compared to our measly four (interestingly, though, half of all stomatopods can’t detect color at all). Their often wild coloration combined with these highly developed powers of color-detection aren’t accidents — they’re likely key in species recognition. You’d hate to try to mate with the wrong species and get a club to the face for your efforts.

On top of that, some mantis shrimp can see a variety of colors in ultraviolet, so “they’re seeing colors that no other animal can see, in a sense,” said Cronin. “Basically color is a property of the nervous system so it’s not really present in the real world, but they can see aspects of the ultraviolet that nothing else can see.”

That’s right: Colors only exist because your brain thinks they do. Your noodle is simply assigning a color to a wavelength of light collected by your retina. Same goes for the mantis shrimp with its ridiculous variety of photoreceptors. (It’s a polychromatic philosophical nightmare, really. What if a mantis shrimp had synesthesia, a human brain disorder in which sounds can produce the experience of color? They’d be freaking out, man, but not really because their brain would perceive it as normal reality. It’s … complicated.)

Anyway, in addition to all of these visual superpowers, the mantis shrimp is the only known critter to see circular polarization of light. Linearly polarized light — the glare off windows and such that’s neutralized by those expensive polarized sunglasses you lost recently — is common, but the circular type is quite rare.

“It’s only created under very special circumstances,” said Cronin, “and the only thing we know about it for sure with the mantis shrimp is that they use it for signaling, so they themselves produce patterns that are circularly polarized on their bodies, which is extremely odd.”

It’d be easy to assume that this staggering amount of information would require an enormous brain to handle, but this is not the case with a mantis shrimp. Whereas our eyes funnel raw data to the brain, in stomatopods the bulk of the processing is done in the eye itself. Indeed, the mantis shrimp’s eye is actually larger than its brain, which if you think about it would look crazy weird if humans were the same way.

“By having all of this complexity at the receptor level,” said Cronin, “you basically are preprocessing everything. So that when it leaves the receptors it’s already streamed into information channels and the brain just basically says, How much is there of this, and How much is there of that, and Make a decision based on that.”

All this data and processing power is pivotal when hunting with such speed and strength, or when defending yourself, for that matter. These things are seriously ornery, like the honey badgers of the sea, and the more information they have to work with to push back against large predators like octopuses, the better.

(Please see website for full article).

The Department of Biological Sciences seeks to recruit two permanent, full-time lecturers.

General Biology: The successful candidate will teach introductory biology for majors, covering topics in basic cellular and molecular biology, genetics, physiology, ecology and evolution.  The candidate will also teach a core laboratory course for biology majors that provides skills needed for upper division laboratory courses.

Physiology: The successful candidate will teach an upper division course and its companion upper level laboratory course in Animal Physiology. The candidate will also teach a required introductory course in general biology for allied health majors.

Successful candidates will have a Ph. D. in a relevant area (or areas) of biological sciences and experience in college-level teaching that includes both regular and laboratory courses. In addition, both candidates must have experience with current methods for encouraging student engagement and for the assessment of student learning outcomes.

UMBC is a medium-sized research university in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area, whose combined excellence in research and outstanding educational programs have earned recognition by US News and World Report as the "#1 Up-and-Coming National University”.  The university has also been recognized for its strong commitment towards the inclusion of women and students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. For information about the Department of Biological Sciences and its education programs, visit http://biology.umbc.edu.

Applicants should submit a cover letter indicating the position of interest, curriculum vitae, summary of current teaching philosophy and future teaching interests and at least three letters of reference.  All materials should be sent, preferably in PDF format, to biosearch@umbc.edu. Review of applications will begin on November 15, 2013 and continue until the position is filled, with an expected start date of Aug. 1, 2014. 

The United States Fish and Wildlife Services has recently showed ongoing support to Dr. Bernard Lohr for the development of behavioral methodologies for saving the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow from extinction. The support comes in the form of a grant awarded to Lohr’s lab to facilitate the investigation of breeding a local close relative of the Florida sparrows in captivity in the hope that they will produce viable offspring that can eventually be re-introduced into the wild. Currently there are fewer than 200 Grasshopper Sparrows left in their Florida habitat, categorizing them as “critically endangered.” Graduate students, Sarah Luttrell and Archer Larned, are working alongside Lohr both in the lab and in the field to discover the optimal conditions under which the sparrows breed and rear their offspring. Results from the studies conducted in Lohr’s lab will be conveyed to scientists in Florida to assist with ongoing conservation efforts there. Lohr’s interest in auditory sensory ecology originally sparked his curiosity about the Florida Sparrow seeing as they are one of the few breeds of small song birds that can hear at high pitched frequencies. “It turns out it’s one of those things where the answers you get raise more questions, and more questions, that turn out to be fascinating in and off themselves,” said Lohr of his work with the birds. The dedication of over 20 years of his life to working with birds has not only led Lohr to being on the path to bringing back a vital species from near extinction, but has also granted him the honor of being made an elective member of the American Ornithologist’s Union.

By: Caitlin Kowalewski

The following students majoring in our department are winners in their poster sessions at the 16^th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences, held at UMBC on Saturday, October 26, 2013.

1^st  Place
BIO-ANALYTICAL METHODS TO DETERMINE ANDROGEN
RECEPTOR O-GLCNACYLATION
Jhullian J. Alston, Jordy J. Hsiao, Brandon H. Ng, Melinda M. Smits, Michael E Summers

BIOLOGY major

1^st Place
INHIBITION OF LUNG TUMOR INITIATION BY RNAI TARGETING WNT
SIGNALING
Sagar Bajpai,Tuomas Tammela ,Tyler Jacks

BIOLOGY major

1^st Place
TESTING FOR FEMALE SONG IN NEWLY RECOGNIZED SPECIES:
THE PUERTO RICAN ORIOLE
Susanna Campbell, Kevin Omland

BIOLOGY major

2^nd Place
BLUNTED RESISTANCE TRAINING-INDUCED MUSCLE REGROWTH
AMONG ATROPHIED OLDER ADULTS IS ASSOCIATED WITH
HEIGHTENED INFLAMMATORY/PROTEOLYTIC SIGNALING
Yu-Rei Raymond Chang, Michael Stec, Marcas Bamman

BIOLOGY major

2^nd Place
CHARACTERIZING THE FORAGING BEHAVIOR OF MALARIA VECTORS
DURING THE WET SEASON IN NCHELENGE, ZAMBIA
Samantha Eng, Smita Das, Laura C. Norris, Douglas E. Norris

BIOCHEM major

1^st Place
CONTRIBUTION OF ELF3 TO THE TLR-DRIVEN CATABOLIC RESPONSES IN
ARTICULAR CHONDROCYTES: POTENTIAL ROLE IN CARTILAGE
DESTRUCTION IN OSTEOARTHRITIS
Catrina Johnson, Miguel Otero, Mary Goldring

BIOLOGY major

2^nd Place

HOW WELL DO SPECIES TREE METHODS DEAL WITH GENE FLOW?   MITOCHONDRIAL INTROGRESSION IN THE NORTHERN ORIOLE COMPLEX

John Malloy, Tylynn Pettrey, Leila Bahmani, Frode Jacobsen, Matthias Gobbert, Kevin Omland.

BIOINFORMATICS major

2^nd Place
TIME-DEPENDENT EFFECT OF OSTEOCHONDRAL FRACTURE ON
HYALURONAN CONCENTRATION IN EQUINE SYNOVIAL FLUID
Elelbin A Ortiz, Michele M Temple-Wong, Ph.D, Christina M Lee, PhD,

BIOCHEM major

2^nd Place
CHARACTERIZATION OF A 3D CELL CULTURE SYSTEM FOR STUDYING
MAMMARY GLAND DEVELOPMENT
Kwadwo Owusu-Boaitey, Ethan Sokol, Piyush Gupta

BIOLOGY major

2^nd Place
SERIAL SECTION ELECTRON MICROGRAPH ALIGNMENT AND
STITCHING IN CONNECTOME RECONSTRUCTION
Talmo Pereira, Ashwin Vishwanathan and Hyunjune Sebastian Seung

BIOCHEM major

1^st Place
THE ROLE OF ADIPONECTIN IN HIGH FAT-MEDIATED
CARDIOPROTECTIVE PROGRAMS
Mashhood Wani, Lauren Haar, Avni Amratia, Christopher Gonzalez, WK Jones

BIOCHEM major