Later this year I’ll be joining the Comparative Embryology of Marine Invertebrates (CEMI) course as an instructor. It will be held from November 25th to December 8th, 2026, at CEBIMar–USP, São Sebastião, Brazil. CEBIMar is where I did my master’s thesis about the embryonic development of a sea biscuit and where the Oceano and Cifonauta […]
Tag: marine biology
The winners of this year’s Nikon Small World in Motion are out, and my favorite is the 5th place entry, A newborn sea urchin walking along the seabed by Alvaro Migotto: It’s adorable to see these newly metamorphosed echinoderms and their long and chubby tube feet learning how to walk. This scene reminded me of […]
The other day I stumbled upon this passage in the Wikipedia page of Piseinotecus, a genus of beautiful nudibranch sea slugs: The name Piseinotecus comes from the Portuguese sentence “pisei no Teco” (I stepped onto Teco). Teco was the name of a dog of the zoologists Ernst Marcus and Eveline Du Bois-Reymond Marcus. While they […]
Amazing deep-sea biodiversity imagery from the expedition Underwater Oases of Mar Del Plata Canyon: Talud Continental IV. Organized by researchers of the CONICET and Schmidt Ocean Institute. The ROV is streaming live. Tip by Marina Cuenca.
Cifonauta 2.0 went live last week! It’s been almost two years of work since our project to modernize the image database was approved. Link: https://cifonauta.cebimar.usp.br The site now has a responsive interface for mobile devices and a new administrative dashboard for users and curators of the database. Yes! We will gradually open up the database […]
When I was finishing my master’s thesis, I created a video to summarize my findings and posted it online. I wanted to share the wonderful things I saw under the microscope—cells dividing, tissues folding, embryos spinning, larvae metamorphosing, juveniles crawling between sand grains. But I also wanted to convey the thrill I felt, seeing these […]
Marine invertebrate larvae are incredibly diverse. They have all sorts of unique features—tentacles, lobes, bands of cilia, shells, bristle hairs, etc.—which they use to capture food, to swim, and to protect themselves from predators. Their morphology is functional. But also beautiful. That’s why I was excited to discover these larval stickers made by Dexter Davis: […]
Currently listening to 2 Hours Of Squid 🦑 from the Krill Waves Radio by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Great episode about mud dragons with María Herranz in the New Species podcast: Post featured image by Alvaro E. Migotto, Fabiane Gallucci, Gustavo Fonseca, Maikon Di Domenico. Kinorhynch. Cifonauta image database. Available at: http://cifonauta.cebimar.usp.br/media/10461/
The InverteFest is here. A moment to celebrate the overlooked diversity of invertebrates around us. I’m re-posting a video I made for the Cifonauta account on Instagram showing different marine invertebrates moving around under the microscope. Enjoy! Invertebrate Gallery Check the gallery below to find out the identity of each marine invertebrate in the movie […]