Homage to Sir Alister Hardy – Natural Historian and Artist

In describing new discoveries, or when writing for a wider audience, natural historians in the past accompanied their observations with illustrations, some of which were made by others and some of which they made themselves. At the forefront of natural historian/illustrators is Philip Henry Gosse, whose father, a professional artist, taught his son to paint in watercolour, a medium that he used to great effect. He also made a large number of line drawings. 

Nowadays, there are many means of producing beautiful and informative illustrations using photography and digital methods and we see the beginning of the transition to these media in Alister Hardy’s “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton”. The book is illustrated by black-and-white photographs taken by Douglas P. Wilson and line drawings and paintings made by Hardy himself. Wilson encountered problems when taking photographs of deep-sea animals that had been brought to the surface as the accurate portrayal of their colours required long exposures that were not practical in the 1950s. This is what Hardy wrote [1]: 

It was my hope, and that of the editors, that in addition to his black-and-whites Dr Wilson would have been able to contribute a series of colour photographs of the living plankton and especially of the richly pigmented animals from the ocean depths. At that time the electronic flash was only just being developed and he felt unable to attempt them. 

It’s a reminder of how much we take beautiful images, films, videos, etc. for granted in the modern era.  In the Introduction to “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” Hardy describes his technique for making illustrations and this is worth quoting in full [1]: 

All save seven of the 142 drawings in the plates were made from living examples or, in a few cases, from those taken freshly from the net when some deep-water fish and plankton animals were dead on reaching the surface.. .. It may be of interest to record how the drawings were made. All the animals, except the larger squids and jelly-fish, were drawn either swimming in flat-glass dishes placed on a background of millimetre squared paper where they were viewed with a simple dissecting lens, or on a slide under a compound microscope provided with a squared micrometer eyepiece; in either case the drawings were first made in outline on paper which had been ruled with faint pencil lines into squares which corresponded to those against which the specimen was viewed. In this way the shape and relative proportions of the parts could be drawn in pencil and checked and rechecked with the animal until it was quite certain they were correct. The outline was then gone over with the finest brush to replace the pencil by a permanent and more expressive water-colour line; were rubbed out and the full colouring of the drawing proceeded with. 

Here are some examples (more are given at the end):  

It is tempting to suggest that their style, especially the dark-field paintings, were influenced by the illustrations in Gosse’s “A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast” [2]. Certainly, both natural historians appreciated that a lively text is boosted by quality images, but few have the talent, and patience, of Gosse and Hardy. 

“The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” was completed at a time when natural history was beginning to be overtaken by deterministic approaches for the study of living organisms. After the structure of DNA was elucidated by Crick and Watson [and others], many began to see the possibility of understanding living creatures by looking at their biochemistry linked to their genetics. This bottom-up approach now dominates academic Biology, and even ecologists, who look at very complex systems with many variables, are fond of reductionist modelling in an attempt to understand what they observe and measure. 

Alister Hardy (above) was appointed Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford University in 1945, one of the most prestigious appointments offered by any university. In the biography written to celebrate his life, published by the Royal Society [3], we read: 

In his inaugural address he looked forward to the encouragement of field studies in ecology and behaviour. In his teaching the direction was away from comparative anatomy and towards general zoology. His colleague, Dr Peter Brunet, saw him as foremost a naturalist who encouraged observation rather than analysis. Physicochemical explanations of life, which left no room for awe, did not attract him. There was still a nature mystic within him. 

It is an approach that is valuable, and natural history should be taught more extensively in our current age: a contrast to the mechanistic view that promotes the idea that answers will eventually be found for nearly everything about living creatures, communities and ecosystems. 

Gosse promoted the idea of a sense of wonder in many of his books, especially in “The Romance of Natural History” that was published in two series in 1860 and 1861 [4,5]. Gosse was driven by a profound belief in the literal truth of the Bible and saw everything in terms of God’s Creation. Hardy’s mysticism was less rigid and more wide-ranging and he went on to establish a foundation dedicated to “a future science of natural theology” [6], the papers of which are now held at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David at Lampeter [7]. Whether one uses theistic, or atheistic, explanations, a sense of awe at what one sees in the natural world is invaluable for interpreting our sense of being. 

Hardy and Gosse are fascinating natural historians from whom we can learn much. 

(Of course, I had no possibility of meeting Gosse in person and I never met Alister Hardy, who died as recently as 1985. However, I claim one small claim to contact with the latter, as one of my University Tutors was Michael Hardy, Sir Alister Hardy’s son).

[1] Alister C. Hardy (1956) The Open Sea. Its Natural History: The World of Plankton. London, Collins New Naturalist. 

[2] Philip Henry Gosse (1853) A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. London, John Van Voorst. 

[3] Norman Bertram Marshall (1986) Alister Clavering Hardy, 10th February 1896 – 22nd May 1985. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1986.0008 

[4] Philip Henry Gosse (1860) The Romance of Natural History [First Series]. London, J. Nisbet & Co. 

[5] Philip Henry Gosse (1861) The Romance of Natural History [Second Series]. London, James Nisbet & Co. 

[6] Cyril Lucas (2004) Hardy, Sir Alister Clavering. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/31196 

[7] https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/library/alister-hardy-religious-experience-research-centre/ 

Being an outsider – the story of John Vaughan Thompson

The study of marine organisms, by both professionals and amateurs, underwent an explosion in the 19th century. Although most interest was in animals and plants of the shore, there was also a developing fascination with plankton, studied by means of nets. Among the pioneers of this approach was John Vaughan Thompson (above), who is little known and doesn’t merit a mention in Lynn Barber’s “The Heyday of Natural History” [1], yet his contribution to our understanding of the life cycles of marine organisms was very important. This is what Sir Alister Hardy said in the Introduction to the New Naturalist book “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” [2]. (The well-known cover of my worn copy is shown below the quote). 

In nearly all the text-books of oceanography it is stated that the tow-net was first used in 1844 by the German naturalist Johannes Müller, and I have myself been guilty of repeating this error. It is certain that Müller’s researches excited the scientific world and led many others to follow him; but our own great amateur naturalist J. Vaughan Thompson, when serving as an army surgeon in Ireland, was using a tow-net to collect plankton from the sea off Cork as early as 1828. It was there that he first described the zoëa, the young planktonic stage of the crab. A little later, 1833, he discovered the true nature of the barnacles and so solved an age-long puzzle. These enigmatic creatures, fixed to rocks or the bottom of ships, had been thought to be aberrant molluscs. Thompson caught little undoubted crustaceans in his tow-net and found that they settled down to be transformed into barnacles. His classical discoveries were described in privately printed memoirs which he published in Cork; they are among the rarest items of biological literature.

 

Adding to the important role that Hardy describes, we read [3] that: 

Thompson not only mastered the use of a fine-meshed net from a moving vessel, but also developed the ingenious method of fastening the net over the spout of the ship’s sea water pumps – arguably the first use of a continuous plankton sampler. 

Davis [3] also wrote: 

Thompson’s studies in marine biology.. ..revolutionised some aspects of zoological thought. His name is unfamiliar however, even to marine zoologists, partly because of the general absorption of his discoveries and the waning of the controversies his research caused. He has not escaped recognition entirely, however, with distinguished naturalists including Charles Darwin, E.R.Lankester, T.R.R.Stebbing, C.M.Yonge, and Sir Sidney Harmer recognising and paying tribute to his genius. 

So why was Thompson questioned by established marine biologists and why were his publications difficult to find, as Hardy [2] has stated? Before answering those questions, we need to find out more about Thompson. 

During his motherless childhood in Berwick, Thompson had a love of natural history and recorded the distribution of plants in the area. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1797 and 1798 and then joined the army as a surgeon, again studying natural history on all his postings. It was as a surgeon that Thompson was assigned to Cork in1816 “the location of his most famous discoveries and the wellspring of all his subsequent publications” [4]. 

In his biography, Damkaer writes further: 

Looking back on Thompson’s discoveries it is now more surprising to believe they were so surprising. The transition between his observations and their acceptance happened fairly quickly, but there was a reluctance to give Thompson much credit when his discoveries were seen to be so commonplace and so easily demonstrated. Perhaps some researchers were simply embarrassed to admit that they had missed such phenomena. 

Fortunately, Adam Nicolson has brought Thompson to a wider audience [5], describing him as “the great hidden hero” of studies on metamorphosis in crustaceans. As he says: 

No one believed him. The biological establishment in Britain and Europe poo-pooed the revelations from Cork.. ..Thompson was right and the grandees wrong but he was poor, publishing privately in Cork and they rich, with all the resources and influence behind them of the great scientific institutions in London, Berlin and Paris. 

There are thus three components to the lack of recognition of Thompson’s work: 

(i) His background as an independent, amateur researcher made him an “outsider”;

(ii) His discoveries challenged the scientific establishment of the time; and

(iii) His work was published privately and was not widely available. 

Have things changed markedly since Thompson’s time and are there lessons to be learned from Thompson’s story? 

 

[1] Lynn Barber (1980) The Heyday of Natural History. Jonathan Cape, London. 

[2] Alister Hardy (1956) The Open Sea: The World of Plankton. Collins New Naturalist, London. 

[3] Peter Davis (2004) Thompson, John Vaughan (1779-1847). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2723 

[4] David M. Damkaer (2016) John Vaughan Thompson (1779-1847), pioneer planktonologist: A life renewed. Journal of Crustacean Biology 36:256-262. 

[5] Adam Nicolson (2021) The Sea is not made of Water. William Collins, London. 

 

P.S. For those wishing to look at Thompson’s original work, his descriptions are now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website:  https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/50371#page/5/mode/1up

 

 

 

Barnacles from space?

Part of a space rocket has been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean near the Scilly Isles. It was from a launch vehicle carrying cargo to the International Space Station and large chunks fell to Earth after the rocket exploded [1]. The pieces that were recovered had coverings of goose barnacles (above and also below left) and those with a very fanciful imagination may conclude that these were carried back to Earth from somewhere in the planet's atmosphere, or beyond. However, the story of their colonisation is not the stuff of science fiction, but nonetheless fascinating.

We are all familiar with acorn barnacles (above right) from our walks along coasts. Millions of the crustaceans coat the surface of rocks, often giving them a creamy-white appearance, but fewer people have seen their relatives, the stalked goose barnacles, like those found on the pieces of space rocket. They can be seen on many shores during low spring tides and they are familiar to those who own boats and ships, where their presence causes a reduction in performance, so that hulls need to be cleaned of barnacles from time to time. To prevent such colonisation, the hull may be treated with anti-fouling paints containing metals that deter the attachment of barnacles, or even have a covering of copper sheets that fulfils the same purpose. The latter was a feature of the fastest tea clipper ships.

Barnacles do not colonise surfaces as adults, but as larvae. The adults are hermaphrodite and shed both sperm and eggs into the sea where fertilisation occurs. The first stage larva that hatches from the fertilised egg is called a nauplius (A, above) and this transforms into a cypris larvae (B, above). Both stages are free-swimming and are carried by currents, often very far from the adults that produced them. The oceans contain enormous numbers of larval stages of many familiar creatures, in addition to barnacle larvae, yet most of us would be hard pressed to identify them as they are so unlike the adults. Limbs are used both for locomotion and feeding and barnacle larvae capture tiny particles of various kinds that are then passed to the mouthparts and swallowed.

If cypris larvae are washed on to a shore, or to any other solid surface, a remarkable series of events takes place. The first is that the larva cements itself to the substratum (different types of adhesive being used across the spectrum of barnacle taxa [2]) and calcareous plates are secreted to begin the process of conversion to the familiar adult form. The process of transformation has been described by Calman [3]:

..after a series of nauplius stages the larva passes suddenly, at a single moult, into a stage in which the body and limbs are enclosed in a bivalved shell.. ..this is known as the cypris stage. Through the valves of the shell a large pair of compounds eyes can be seen, as well as six pairs of two-branched swimming feet, while in front a pair of antennules projects between the valves. On each antennule is a sucker-like disc by means of which the larva, after swimming freely for some time, attaches itself to a stone or some other object, where it remains fixed for the rest of its life. A cementing substance produced by a gland at the base of the antennules attaches the front part of the head firmly to the support; the valves of the shell are cast off, and replaced by rudimentary valves of the adult shell; the six pairs of swimming feet grow out into tendril-like cirri; the compound eyes disappear, and the animal assumes the structure of the adult.

Acorn barnacles and goose barnacles feed using the cirri on their legs, these limbs no longer being required for swimming. Acorn barnacles use the legs to sweep the cirri through an aperture between the shell plates and captured particles of a wide variety are then transferred to the mouthparts, in a similar way to that employed by the larvae. In goose barnacles, the cirri are static, or nearly so, and feeding is from currents or, in the case of moving objects, the water that passes over them. Unlike their smaller relatives, goose barnacles also capture small planktonic animals and the cirri close around these to prevent their escape. To enhance access to currents, goose barnacles have developed a peduncle, or stalk, that is muscular and covered with a strong cuticle. It grows intermittently [4] and those familiar with the cuisine of Portugal will know the structure well after eating a plateful of percebes (see recipe here [5]) and below a video from Gordon Ramsay:  

Goose barnacles are not able to exist for long out of water but acorn barnacles certainly can, as they have calcareous plates that close off the aperture of the "shell" when the cirri are withdrawn. That is why we see them so readily on the shore when the tide is out. Some forms are so high on the shore that they only become submerged at the highest tides, remaining exposed to the air for days, showing how effective the closing plates are at preventing water loss. Altogether, barnacles are most remarkable animals and it is little wonder that they so intrigued Charles Darwin [6].

The basis for the structure and complex life history of these crustaceans is encoded in the barnacle's genes. Repeating a question here that I often asked students: "How do you think the structure and development evolved?" Anyone like to venture a guess as to the stages in the evolution of the life history of barnacles and their way of life?

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34941386

[2] Jaimie-Leigh Jonker, Liam Morrison, Edward P. Lynch, Ingo Grunwald, Janek von Byern and Anne Marie Power. (2015) The chemistry of stalked barnacle adhesive (Lepas anatifera). Interface Focus 5:20140062.

[3] W. T. Calman (1911) The Life of Crustacea. London, Methuen & Co.

[4] John Chaffee and Cynthia Arey Lewis (1988) Pedunculate barnacle stalk growth. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 124:145-162

[5] http://zesterdaily.com/world/gooseneck-barnacles-recipe/

[6] http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Richmond_cirripedia.html