Ode to my snail

In honor of the little snails that graciously allowed me to test their salinity tolerance yesterday:

Ode to the experimental snail:

Oh little snail, how cute you are,
Crawling here and there,
Happily exploring your 1 liter flask,
With no idea your end is near.

The stir bar starts, the water swirls,
The salinity drops to 20 psu,
But you keep scooting round with your little friends,
They haven't got a clue.

Down to 15 the salinity drops,
There's no way to escape the change,
Your friends start peeling off the side of the flask,
And you're feeling kind of strange.

Oh little snail, how cute you are,
You shell checkered like a quilt,
I add more water, and the salinity drops,
And I feel a twinge of guilt.

You see the light, swirling round,
As the salinity reaches four,
And here I stop, my experiment done,
Because, little snail, you were no more.

Media links from my PNAS sea star article

Per several peoples' requests, below are some of the media blurbs and articles in response to my seastar article recently published in the scientific journal PNAS. Caveat: take these with a grain of salt, as all of them have some gross inaccuracies due to the reporters overstepping their knowledge! Bonus points for each scientific error you can catch (comment with it below). ;-)

Vancouver Sun (made the front page!):
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Global+warming+good+starfish+study/1675762/story.html

New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227104.800-starfish-defy-climate-change-gloom.html

Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=rising-stars-of-the-sea-will-global-2009-05-26

UBC Press Release:
http://www.science.ubc.ca/news/282