A Mossy Bath Rug

A friend sent me this link to a bath mat made of moss. They don't specify what types of mosses they are using, but it looks to be Hypnum or maybe Thuidium. It would make for a pretty interesting bathroom experiment. Mosses do not require too much light and they love high humidity levels, thus the bathroom sounds like the perfect place.

I do wonder where they are getting the mosses. Wild collected, from a local landscaper, or are they growing them for this particular project?  

Mossy Frog at the New England Aquarium

I visited Boston a couple of weeks ago and we stopped in for an afternoon at the New England Aquarium. It was my first visit and I enjoyed it immensely. My favorites included the 70 year old green sea turtle who doesn't like to eat broccoli, but she does like lettuce and brussel sprouts. They also have a great exhibit about jellyfish. The jellyfish were very beautifully dangerous floating around in their tanks. The exhibit also included a lot of educational information regarding jellyfish populations and global climate change. With the warming of the oceans we are in for some serious jellyfish overpopulation issues and since these animals are predators they are going to eat quite a lot of the other sea creatures. Good for the jellyfish. Bad for everything else.

In a surprising turn of events I ran into some moss at the aquarium! Mainly it was used in the exhibits of the tropical species to soften the surroundings, keep things moist, and add some greenery. The photo below was the mossiest one of them all!


And what animal just happens to live in the display full of moss? Oh, the mossy frog Theloderma corticale. Many organisms have common names that describe the other plants or animals that they look like. There are the fern mosses (Thuidium sp.) and the feather mosses (Hypnum sp.), just to name a few.

I would have to agree that this frog is well camoflauged to sit on mossy tree trunks and hide from predators. It is an example of an organism evolving to blend in with its surroundings. Those frogs who did not blend in would have been eaten by predators and those that blended in would have been survived to reproduce more mossy looking frogs. This system of natural selection over many years has led to the highly patterned and frilly frog that we see today. (Check out the bottom photo to get a sense of how frilly the arms and legs of the frog were. That was my favorite part about him/her!)


Here is a close up shot of the little guy/gal. I had a hard time shooting through the glass front of the exhibit , so I apologize for the fuziness. You can see some additional photos on the wiki page of this frog species.

Off to Study Mosses in Japan

Well this is my last day in Connecticut before heading off to Japan tomorrow. My laundry is done, the lab is tidy, and some of my fabulous fellow graduate students will be taking care of my mosses here in Connecticut while I am gone. I still have a full day ahead of me with packing and cleaning my apartment, but the anxiety about the trip is starting to fade away and I am finally getting excited about the whole adventure.

One of the items that is quite important when meeting people professionally in Japan are business cards. Thy are called meishi in Japan. There is a formal method of meishi exchange that includes bowing. Here is a link to the entire story regarding meishi exchange. Hopefully I will not completely botch the exchange process and I can avoid embarassment.

Of course the business cards that I ordered got tied up in the printing and shipping process and will not arrive before I leave. Hopefully I will be able to have them sent to me so that I can use them while I am there.

I have posted versions of my business card in english and the one the my Japanese research advisor translated into english. The translation is pretty rough. Looking up Japanese characters is not easy. It says Connecticut University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology on the first line. Doctoral University student on the second line. The third line is my name. The prevaling comment that I have gotten is that it is pretty fun that my name in Japanese has two smiley faces. : ) The following lines are my contact information at the National Institute for Basic Biology.

On the at home front, the moss walk this past Saturday went well. We had six participants who came on the walk. We didn't walk very far, which is usually the case when looking at mosses, but everyone had a good time. Since everyone on the walk was new to mosses I introduced several of the common genera that can be found in Connecticut.

Atrichum Hypnum Leucobryum Polytrichum Plagiomnium Sphagnum

Well that is all for now and I will next be posting from Japan. Wish me luck.