Hello and welcome to Conservation Skills
in 10 Minutes or Less.
This series of short, skill based videos
is brought to you by the US Fish and Wildlife Services National
Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
If you have a couple of minutes, pull up a chair
and pick up a new conservation skill,
or maybe refresh an old one, on topics ranging from fish
culture the bird identification to stream restoration.
Enjoy.
Hello, my name is Matthew Patterson.
And I'm of course leader at the National Conservation Training
Center.
I'm going to lead you improve the skill exercise today.
So what's the topic for today?
Today, we're talking about describing
how a mantle flap works.
You're probably thinking to yourself,
what is a mantle flap?
Before I tell you what a mantle flap is,
I'd like to show you an amazing video
of a mantle flap in action.
Then I'll play the video again and walk you
through the details.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[END PLAYBACK]
Pretty amazing video, right?
Now I want to describe what's going on in that video.
We're going to watch it again here in a minute.
But there's a few things that you
need to know first, to give you some background on what's
going on.
And mostly, you need some background
on the two major players in that video--
the fish and the mussel.
Now the first thing that you need
to know about freshwater mussels is that they're borrowers.
They don't move a whole lot.
They're pretty stationary.
Second, you need to know that freshwater mussels brood
their larvae.
Here you can see the mantle flap of the mussel.
And in between that sort of mound that you see
is the brood pouch of the adult female, where
she broods the larval stage.
And this is what those larvae look
like when they're outside of the brood pouch of the adult
female.
The last thing that you need to know
is that in almost all cases, the larval stage of Freshwater
mussels must attach to a freshwater fish
to complete metamorphosis to the juveniles stage.
So the obvious question is, how in the world
is the larval stage of an animal that barely moves attach
to a mobile host like a fish?
Well interestingly, Stephen Jay Gould,
famous writer and Harvard professor,
in his book, The Panda's Thumb, said
that the relationship between the genus Lampsilis
and its host fish is his favorite example
of an awe-inspiring adaptation in nature.
Pretty amazing, right?
So let's watch that video again and break it down.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
We're going to play the video this time with our audio,
so that you can hear my descriptions of what's
going on.
So let's pause it right there.
This is major player number one in the video, the large mouth
bass.
The large mouth bass or carnivorous,
and their favorite food tends to be small fishes like minnows.
You should also know that small mouth bass and large mouth bass
tend to be commonly used to host fish for freshwater mussels,
especially those in the genus Lampsilis.
All right.
Let's continue.
Now here's our second major player--
the female Lampsilis ovata, also called the pocketbook.
She's undulating that mantle flap
to entice the large mouth bass to come up close.
OK, let's pause that again.
Notice the amazing mimicry here in the mantle flap.
The mantle flap has eye spots and fins.
It even has a lateral line down the center.
Amazing.
And this bass think so, too.
Clearly, his mouth is watering.
Let's pause it one more time.
Notice here, the gill tissues, busting at the seams
with larvae, protruding up through the mantle flap.
[INAUDIBLE] also noticed that the flap is undulating faster.
The bass is fooled and ready to strike.
Then, boom!
The bass is expecting lunch, but gets a mouthful
of larval mussels instead.
[END PLAYBACK]
So you're probably thinking yourself right now, wow.
That was an awesome video.
Thanks for sharing.
But I thought this series was supposed to teach me a skill.
Well it is.
And the skill today was describing
how a mantle flap works.
It's all about communication, and communicating
difficult science topics to different audiences.
So the skill practice in this case?
I'm assigning your homework assignment.
What I want you to do is show this video--
or if you have your own video, that's fine too--
to two different audiences.
In my case, I chose a audience of scientists,
because the series is geared towards scientists.
But if I was going to give a description of this video
to my, say 11-year-old son.
I might say something totally different.
So pick a couple of audiences, and really think hard
about the audience.
And then edit your description of the video accordingly.
Then, from the two audiences, ask for feedback.
How did I do?
Did it make sense?
And practice the skill that way.
If you want to learn more about freshwater mussels,
you can take a series of courses at the National Conservation
Training Center.
We have freshwater mussel propagation for restoration,
Freshwater mussel identification,
and conservation biology of freshwater mussels.
If you want to learn more about communicating science,
I would suggest going to the NCTC website
and looking up our communications training
program.
There are several great communication courses here,
including communicating science and distilling
your message, that would help you with this particular skill
exercise.
And if you hang on after this video,
I'll walk you through how to find all of these courses
on the NCTC website.
So thanks for joining us.
If you have questions about this skill or any skill
or any course at the National Conservation Training Center,
you can contact me at the email or phone below.
Thanks.
OK, as promised, I wanted to show you
how to find these courses on the NCTC website.
The best bet is really to Google.
Type in National Conservation Training Center.
And then go into the Search bar.
In this case, you'd put in a freshwater mussels.
And here you can see conservation biology
of freshwater mussels, freshwater mussel propagation
for restoration.
If you click one of those, it opens up to a PDF.
And have course description, course objectives,
location of the course, length of the course,
as well as other course links.
If you want to find the communications catalog,
just type in locations catalog.
And this gives you that list I showed you before of courses
available in communications.
Thanks again for joining us for Conservation
Skills in 10 Minutes or Less.
If you enjoyed this video, please give us a Like,
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or even check out one of the many other skill based videos
we have in the series.
Have a great day, and always remember--
the beautiful thing about learning
is that no one can take it away from you.