by Ronald L. Shimek, PhD | Dec 15, 2015 | CORAL - Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, Marine
Are Any Bristleworms Actually Venomous? That question first arose in modern times, I presume, when the first swimmer in warm tropical waters stepped on a fireworm and discovered just how much fun it was to hop around on one foot, cursing. By the time I got around to...
by Ronald L. Shimek, PhD | Nov 23, 2015 | CORAL - Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, Freshwater, Marine, News & Notes
A Puzzling Term from Fish Anatomy: The Cleithral Spot As with anything in life, the significance of a spot varies with one’s perception. Lady Macbeth saw a spot of blood on her hands that truly was a manifestation of her guilt in convincing her husband to murder his...
by Ronald L. Shimek, PhD | Nov 13, 2015 | CORAL - Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, Marine
Dictionaries define “tresses” as long locks of hair, particularly from women, and “dis-” is defined as a Latin prefix meaning “apart,” “asunder,” “away,” “utterly,” or having a privative, negative, or reversing force. Whew, quite a sentence! So a distressed damsel...
by Ronald L. Shimek, PhD | Nov 12, 2015 | CORAL - Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, Marine
Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet, Watching her captive reef When she saw a sea spider Eat the zoanthid beside her, It gave her a lot of grief. Now, the first question you need to ask yourself, before you proceed any further in this essay is, “What is a Tuffet?” In...
by Ronald L. Shimek, PhD | Aug 13, 2015 | CORAL - Ronald L. Shimek, PhD, Marine
The time is in the early 1860’s, in the midst of the American Civil War, but no matter, science moves on. One of the early American pioneers of malacology, the study of mollusks, was Augustus Addison Gould, who was born in 1805 and graduated from Harvard College...
