Sea Butterflies Podcast: Extras

Images

Slideshow images courtesy of Barbara Erdmann and Ari Daniel Shapiro

Videos

Watch videos of pteropods swimming on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Charismatic Microfauna blog.

Facts

While sea butterflies in the genus Limacina are adapted to life in the polar regions, pteropods are present in oceans the world over.

Sea butterflies are filter feeders, using a mucus web on their foot-wings to catch prey, mostly algae but sometimes their own larvae.

While Clione limacina lacks a shell itself, it feeds exclusively on pteropods with shells. It grasps its prey with its tentacle-like buccal cones, then uses it's chain-saw-like tongue called a radula to pull the sea butterfly from its shell.

Participate

Want to study ocean creatures at the micro scale? The New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance has instructions on making a plankton tow for collecting plankton, and sieves for separating plankton by size for viewing under a microscope.