Kristen Marhaver

@coralsci.bsky.social

744 Followers 156 Following

Coral scientist running a gene bank-IVF clinic-NICU-daycare for baby endangered corals, so of course it's super easy and nothing ever goes wrong. Fighting for baby corals because they have very short arms. www.marhaverlab.com

A timelapse video of an orangey-brown coral colony with white speckles sitting on a ceramic disk. The coral has about 100 small round polyps and about 13 pieces of turkey fall onto the coral. The mouths nearest to the food bits each engulf the food while the whole colony does coordinated pulses to ingest and digest and wrestle the food into oblivion. Later the 13 eating polyps will send some of the delicious amino acids and lipids that they digested to their neighboring polyps so that the whole colony can grow together in a coordinated and tiny and ferocious kind of way.
Two coral colonies, the left colony is a bigger, ruffly, orange coral, and the right one is a smaller, purpley green, round coral. Pieces of actual Thanksgiving turkey fall onto each one. They start ingesting the coral into their very stretchy mouths. The big orange one seems like it's going to win the eating competition, until the tiny one does. Video speed 100x.
A small yellow coral colony with about a hundred long yellow tentacles sits on a ceramic disc coated with pink algae. A bunch of bits of Thanksgiving turkey are dropped onto the coral, which gulps the turkey into each of its 7, with help from some of its tentacles. Impressive speed and precision for a baby invertebrate eating Turkey for the first time.
A video of a small brown coral colony with white speckles and seven separate polyps surrounded by tentacles. A bunch of tiny bits of Thanksgiving turkey fall onto the coral, which proceeds to gnash and inhale and slurp the turkey bits into its mini mouths in a somewhat terrifying and speedy manner, especially given how tiny it is.
Two orange and white coral polyps about 1 cm wide sit on a round tile encrusted in pink algae. Two tiny pieces of turkey meat land on the polyps, which slowly close in their arms, stretch open their mouths, and fully snarf the turkey. The polyp on the right slowly zips its mouth closed from bottom to top and with not problem. Wow it probably sucks to be plankton in the ocean.
An overhead view of a scuba diver hovering over a green coral colony. The diver has arms and legs extended outward, and the coral colony is wider than the diver. The rest of the frame is filled with green and gray-purple coral colonies the same size or bigger.
16 ceramic tiles on a black plastic rack, each hosting a baby coral one two three years old. Various corals are yellow with long tentacles, yellow and encrusting, brown with tiny round polyps, brownish orange and starting to ruffle into brain shapes, and brown with big fart round polyps and white mouths.
Three small colorful brain corals in an aquarium. The camera pans to tiny white ceramic plugs with small brown circles: these are younger brain corals that have not yet gained their brainy shape.
A grooved purple ceramic disk with a few translucent coral polyps, filmed through a microscope. The polyps wiggle their long tentacles around and smooth their tiny central mouths a few times.
A single pink-beige embryo against a fully black background. The cell divides in half by splitting from the top, but the two cells stay attached. Then each cell divides over and over again until it turns into a ball of hundreds of cells which will eventually grow to form a coral larva
A timelapse video of a single baby coral polyp sitting on a purple ceramic background. The polyp stretches its long green and yellow tentacles out in all directions and kind of noodles them around.