Algae having a par-tay today. It's nothing compared to the 5-million year bender they went on 250 million years ago. Creative Commons eutrophication&hypoxia

About 250 million years ago in what is today the vast backwater of north central Siberia, the Earth coughed forth an unimaginable quantity of lava over the course of 1 million years. The liquid rock was a low-viscosity, thin stuff (for lava), so instead of forming a field of towering volcanoes it oozed out into endless plains. Covering some 1.5 million square kilometers today (600,000 square miles — something like the surface area of Europe), the beds may have originally covered 7 million square kilometers and taken up 1 to 4 million cubic kilometers in volume.

Scientists still do not agree why this happened, although it has happened many times before and since around the world. But they do agree on the timing: it happened at the same time as the Great Dying — during the Permo-Triassic extinction just prior to the age of dinosaurs that wiped out more life on Earth than any other, including the one with the giant asteroid with our name on it.

Not all scientists agree that the Siberan Traps, as they are called (trap comes from the Swedish word for “stairs”, which is how the frozen lavas can appear today) chiefly caused the extinctions. But many do, and it seems to be solidifying (er, pardon the pun) as the majority opinion.

What is also known is that life took some time to recover from this cataclysm. For at least 5 million years after, we can find little in the fossil record. Scientists have wondered whether this was a case of too much or too little food.

How, you might ask, could too much be a problem? Well, visit your nearest pond contaminated by fertilizers from lawns, golf courses, or farms and you will see: vast swarms of algae, that hog all the oxygen and choke out “higher” forms of life like fish. Or, for that matter, the New-Jersey-sized Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which formed in response to the endless streams of fertilizer runoff from farms pumped into the sea by the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio River system. We call this eutrophication*, and now, the authors of a paper in in Earth and Planetary Science Letters are pretty sure it is what prevented most life from recovering for those five million long years.

What happens when the party gets a little too wild. A lake in China with rampant eutrophication. Creative Commons eutrophication&hypoxia

How might scientists figure this out? As it turns out, one of the enzymes that catalyzes photosynthesis has a quirk. Thinking back to high-school chemistry, recall that the nucleus of an atom is made of protons and neutrons. Different elements are defined by the number of protons their nuclei contain. Carbon *always* has six protons. If it had seven, it would be nitrogen. But elements can vary in the number of neutrons they have. Carbon, for instance, can commonly have six neutrons or seven. Carbon-12 represents the former, while carbon-13 the latter.

As it happens, one of the chief enzymes of photosynthesis — RuBisCO, the one responsible for grabbing carbon dioxide from air and setting it on the path to become glucose — processes carbon dioxide containing carbon-12 a little faster than carbon dioxide containing carbon-13. Over jillions of cycles, the difference accumulates, and life becomes enriched in carbon-12. It makes little or no difference to the organisms themselves.

But it makes a big difference to scientists, who can use this knowledge to tell how fast the oceanic biological pump — the transfer of carbon from the atmosphere and surface waters to the seabed by microorganisms that live, die, and sink — is churning. The more these microbes nom, the more carbon-12 builds up in preference to carbon-13 in seabed deposits, where marine algae sink, store carbon, and are eventually pressed into limestone after they die. Scientists who studied marine deposits recorded in Chinese rocks during this 5-million year gap have found the carbon-12 enrichment is about double what exists today. If life had starved after the Traps did their dirty work, they would expect to see the opposite.

This is the scenario the authors of this new paper believe may have happened: as they erupted, the Siberian Trap lavas and the rocks they metamorphosed by contact spewed carbon dioxide (as well as many other volcanic gases) into the atmosphere. This warmed the atmosphere, which increased the evaporation of water, itself a greenhouse gas, perpetuating the cycle.

At the same time, more water vapor produced more rain, which weathered the land quickly. All that runoff drove incredible quantities of phosphate — a nutrient that limits the rate at which marine algae can grow — into the ocean. With a new all-you-can-eat buffet of phosphate and carbon dioxide at their disposal, marine microbes went nuts. The ocean was stripped of free oxygen, preventing any animal life that had managed to survive the extinction itself from regaining ground. Once the initial trauma of the Permo-Triassic extinction was over, these algae must have bloomed in quantities unimaginable. What is now the Blue Planet, and once may have been the White Planet, was briefly, it seems, the Green Planet.

What finally stopped the madness (from our perspective as vertebrates), was the waning of the volcanoes. Eventually, carbon dioxide levels dropped, and warming and rainfall decreased. With less erosion, oceanic phosphate and nitrogen concentrations dropped. Without enough of these nutrients to go around, algal numbers shrank, leaving enough oxygen around for other forms of life to exploit. And, luckily for us, they did.
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* Which is the reason you should all be using phosphate-free detergents.

Meyer, K., Yu, M., Jost, A., Kelley, B., & Payne, J. (2011). δ13C evidence that high primary productivity delayed recovery from end-Permian mass extinction Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 302 (3-4), 378-384 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2010.12.033

The Many Ways to Be a Fungus (in Colorado) from Jennifer Frazer on Vimeo.

I missed Edith Widder’s TED talk on ocean bioluminescence when it came out in 2010. Had I known, you would have been seeing this much sooner. It clocks in at 17 minutes, but don’t let that intimidate you; it speeds by. There’s a little something here for the biophiles, engineers, and daring explorers in all of us.

For a high-res version of this video, click here.

What I would have given to have been in that Wasp suit when she turned the lights out.

That jellyfish burglar alarm is just fantastically beautiful. Notice how the pattern is slightly different with each rotation. Why does it remind me of an ’80s electronic toy?

For the record, I am so with Edith on the whole, “When someone offers you a trip to the deep sea, you say YES.” In fact, I’m actively looking for a low-budget ticket to several thousand clicks down; it’s a dream of mine. I’m no Dennis Tito, but I can write. If you know someone traveling to the deep sea who might be in need of a science writer specializing in biodiversity and natural history who doesn’t eat much and fits conveniently in most overhead bins (5’2″, 108 lb.), LET ME KNOW.  : )

For a more in-depth look at deep sea life which Dr. Widder helped work on, see the Deep Sea episode of Blue Planet, available through netflix in the US (and mercifully narrated by David Attenborough, and not Oprah). You will not regret it.

Rainforest on Mo'orea. Whatever you do, don't drop your keys in here. Creative Commons Tim Waters

National Geographic sent a photographer into the field to photograph every species he could find in a cubic foot of rainforest on the French Polynesian island of Mo’orea. It’s both an interesting illustration of some biodiversity (what about the microbes?) and a fun visual treat — take some time to just flip through the photographs and absorb the information visually. Don’t bother reading the scientific names (unless you must) — just read the common names, or just look at the pictures. Note the variations in shape and form.

I think they were looking much harder for insects than they were for fungi. I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find more — especially the little ones that like to hang out on rotting pieces of wood. Also: could we get a species ID on the lichen? Even to genus? A little respect, please!

In particular, notice how even otherwise dull-looking insects can have their special own beauty when viewed up close: the graceful sweep of the almond moth’s antennae, for instance, the fan dancer’s wings of the white plume moth, or the kinked wingtips of one of the kindeid moths. Other details to look for: Notice the antennae located on the snout of the weevil, and the ubercute juvenile Gump’s woodlouse. Awwww. Happy Monday, y’all.

Myzostoma cirrifera. Upper layer of internal organs on the right, lower level at left. More on this guy below. Creative Commons W. Blaxland Benham (after Lang and von Graf)

As we ended last year with a slide show, so shall we begin this year with another. The Census of Marine Life has been a herculean 10-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations (OK, maybe just one of those) in the ocean. The hundreds of scientists involved have succeeded spectacularly, though still have likely only scratched the surface.

Last fall scientists disclosed many of their results, and some of the most striking images have been collected by National Geographic into a tome called “Citizens of the Sea“, available since last fall. Cornelia Dean (science reporter and former science editor at the New York Times, who I was fortunate enough to meet in grad school (for science writing)) reviewed the book in the Science Times on Tuesday, and included a spectacular slide show that is above all what I’d like you to look at today.

But before I write more about that, my first impression of the book from flipping through it on Amazon is that it is curiously out-dated graphically. Its chunky photo layout and washed-out art seem like something you’d find in a National Geographic book from the 1980s. It pales in comparison to the stunning layouts and vivid photography of the University of Chicago Press’s “The Deep” and DK Books’ “Reef” and “Prehistoric Life”. The book also seems heavily weighted (as most are) toward metazoans, or, to put in in English, the big stuff in the ocean. As usual, microbes, protists, and larvae are missing out of proportion to their importance.

Of course, that has no bearing on the text, which I have not had time to peruse, and seems it may be more substantial than what you get in those other books since it was penned by Nancy Knowlton, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian. And judging by the nine five-star reviews at Amazon (the book received no ratings less than five), the writing is where the book shines, just as much as it is wanting in those other books.

Still, as Ms. Dean points out, the book is a bit scattershot taxonomically, making it hard for readers to understand biodiversity systematically. That omission — common to many books — is part of why I started this blog. When you can fit new organisms into general taxonomic groups in your head and relate them to other groups, it not only makes organisms easier to remember and their biology more understandable, it helps you understand the path of evolution too.

OK, back to what really matters: the critters. A few comments on the organisms in the slide show: When I was in grad school (for mycology), I studied fungal spores that, while admittedly huge for fungi, were on the order of the same length as the copepod (Ceraqtonotus steinigeri) pictured in the show — 200-300 micrometers (not my spore photo, but take a look here). That’s right: there are fungal spores as big as that copepod, which looks like it could be shrimp-sized if you didn’t have the scale bar to tell you better. Think about that.

You’ll also notice that the show features two — count ‘em, 2! — new Arctic bryozoan species. Remember the bryozoans — the moss animals? I covered them in my first guest blog at Scientific American. The photographs are of their calcareous skeletons only — the little animals you’d find poking their lophophores (crown of feeding tentacles) out of those holes are conspicuously absent, probably due to the preparation method involved in scanning electron microscopy — that is, spraying your sample with a film of gold.

Finally, I want to point out a delightful little organism new to me — the myzostomid, or parasite of crinoids, or sea lillies near the end of the show (see additional illustration at top of this post). I could write a whole book about the sea lillies and their charms (they were super-abundant in former times, and their fossils are still so. You can find little stem pieces in marine rocks all over North America, and the most stunning collections of fossilized sea-lily beds are swirling virtuoso works of Art Nouveau). But this little guy (being unceremoniously trod upon by a limelight-hogging shrimp) is apparently a representative of an entire group that has evolved just to parasitize sea lillies*. The myzostomids, while unrelated taxonomically, seem to be part flatworm (their diverticulated reproductive system resembles the dendritic digestive system of flatworms), part chiton/scale insect (their shield-like bodies). They’ve even adopted the vivid coloration of their hosts.

And here’s the kicker: they’re annelids — the group traditionally known as “segmented worms”, the most famous member being the humble earthworm. You see the segments? Me neither. Evolution: the great aimless wanderer. But oh, what beauties it stumbles into.

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*They’re active feeders on sea lillies, so I don’t know why the slide show caption says that it’s “commensal”, or a passive guest. Of course, Cornelia also says that the tubular eyes of the barreleye fish stick up above its head, when, as expertly covered by Steven Colbert two years ago, they are clearly inside its see-through head. Don’t get too mad at Cornelia, though. As a former reporter, I can say we do our best, but we’re on deadline, and sometimes we make mistakes.

This is *not* the ninja slug, but if you imagine that seedpod is a katana, we're 90% of the way there. OK, maybe not. Creative Commons papalars. Click for link.

As the year rounds down, I wanted to point you in the direction of a nice gallery put together by the editors at National Geographic of 2010’s weirdest new animals.

My fave: the ninja slug of Borneo. Apparently these guys shoot calcium carbonate hormone-soaked “love darts” into their paramours. Somehow this increases reproductive fitness, though whether it does so by helping lady slugs make more eggs or by putting them more “in the mood”, if you know what I mean, Nat Geo does not say. The wikipedia page seems to imply love dart hormones increase sperm survival on the part of the shooter, and that the use of the darts is fairly widespread among land snails and slugs. As with so many invetebrate systems, I’m *really glad* this is not a part of human courtship. Do not miss the gallery of love dart photos and drawings at the bottom of the page — fascinating. On a related note, anyone who has not scene the epic snail love scene (complete with opera music) in “Microcosmos” is greatly missing out. The snails look like they’re having more fun than most humans. Run, do not walk.

Taxonomically, slugs are snails that lost their shells. Like lichenization, this turn of events has taken place many times in unrelated groups, so “slugs” are what taxonomists call “polyphyletic”, or not a true, valid taxonomic group (which should always be based on a single ancestor and its descendants — that is, a monophyletic group). There are even some slugs that are still in the process of losing their shells and carry a tiny shell too small to duck into on their back, rendering them “semi-slugs”. Slugs are gastropods, which are in turn molluscs. You can see how it all fits together and who else they’re related to here. That’s it for 2010! See you in the New Year!

The Cocoon. Creative Commons raindog

Note: Clarification appended

It’s not fair to review an entity one has not experienced oneself. But since the new Darwin Centre of London’s formidable Natural History Museum is in, well, London, and I am demonstrably not, nor easily got there short of a $1000 plane ticket (and I don’t expect the NHM’s going to comp me, especially after this review), I am reduced to reviewing by proxy: through the New York Times review, and my impressions thereof.

If you are not familiar with the newly opened Cocoon at the Darwin Centre, take a mosey on over to the NYT and so so here. Or check out the Darwin Centre’s web site here. In short, the Darwin Centre is the Natural History Museum’s attempt to put the museum and what it does on display in a thoroughly modern way*. Out with Victoriana, in with touch screeniana.

My chief complaint about the Darwin Centre, and its cousins like this exhibit on biodiversity at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, is that they continue the trend of ascepticizing natural history and self-gratifyingly focusing on scientists rather than the real show — the ORGANISMS.

As the New York Times says,

The research facilities and scientists are part of the exhibition; they are glimpsed through windows, framed by explanations. They even become the subject of the show. The Cocoon’s displays are not really about botany and bugs; they are about the collection and study of botany and bugs. The exhibition is really about the museum itself — its methods and materials, its passions and enterprise. I don’t know of another science museum that does this. Along the way, of course, you learn about the natural world, but the real focus is on how that world is studied, and how the museum pursues that goal.

I don’t want to paint the good folk at the NHM in a negative light. I’m sure the designers of this exhibit spent countless hours thinking it through and poring over what way they could best reach the public. They want to teach evolution, the scientific method, and how modern taxonomy works; they want to bring science to life by showing scientists in action. They were given a goal and a budget, and they did their best. I just don’t agree with the goal.

Or rather, that putting this information on display is as important or as interesting and appealing to the public as some other goals. Would you rather go to this exhibit with your child, or one about slime molds or diatoms?  In short, what bothers me most about this exhibit, and the one in San Francisco, is what they seem to say about where biological natural history education is headed. All the effort they put into this exhibit could have been put into making the world’s first Hall of Protists, or Plant Evolution Gallery, or a Bacteria and Archaea Family Album. Instead, we get swipe cards, video guides, sorting games, and generalities — and a rather narrow view of nature. Butterflies, insects, and flowers are great, but what about all the other stuff?

Personally, I find the products much more fascinating than the process. There should be a place to showcase all of them too, and not just the ones with backbones, shells, or exoskeletons. Because learning about the products, while inherently fascinating, almost always leads to questions about the process. After all, Darwin himself started there. He spent five years looking at products while aboard the Beagle.

When I write hear about yeast and their “lifestyles”, or about diatoms, or about pine pollen, or slime molds, or the sex lives of red algae, or about alien pelagic peanut creatures, I’m only scratching the tiniest surface of all the fantastic forms, creatures, structures, and lifestyles that I learned in school. And believe me when I say that *I* only scratched the surface of what’s out there. There is so much more: the fantastically beautiful filaments called slime mold elaters, for example. Hornworts. Nematode-trapping fungi. Where baby ferns come from (not adult ferns). Anglerfish and sea angels. Ping pong tree sponges. Archaea. Radiolarians. Camel spiders. Slime nets. A blizzard of protists and algae and all their mind boggling forms. These things are this blog’s raison d’etre: I want to show and tell you about them not only because I can barely contain my own excitement, but because almost no one else is, at least not in a way the general public can understand.

But I can tell you who should be: natural history museums. A few are trying. I’m particularly fond of the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian, which I reviewed here last fall, and which makes an admirable attempt to convey biodiversity through pictures, specimens, and an armada of world-class fossils. I also quite like the evolution and fossils exhibit called “Prehistoric Journey” here in Colorado at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. My memory is hazy, but I did visit the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York when it was new about 10 years ago, and I seem to recall it falls somewhere between the two extremes. And, I should note, the Natural History Museum in London itself has just begun what looks to be a fascinating new exhibit (again, I have no plane ticket) on Deep Sea Biodiversity.

I am also a *huge* fan of zoos, aquariums, and botanic gardens because they do such a good job of spotlighting the organisms, but often their signage falls short: it’s vague, confusing, overly technical, overly simplistic, or boring. It doesn’t help you make connections between organisms to understand common structures, interesting adaptations, the general features of a given group, relatedness — or evolution. And lets face it: fungi, protists, bacteria, archaea, microbes, algae, lichens and kin always get the shaft. There is no where you can go to see and learn about them and their forms and variety. But there should be, and as it stands, the natural history museums are the best existing place.

But they too struggle for funding, so it frustrates me that they now seem to be prioritizing and funneling what they do have toward this new once-removed tack toward natural history. Biodiversity and natural history as monolithic concept and scientific endeavor: scattershot, sterile, and boring. Only the choir will find that engaging. The cocoon, at least it seems to me, peering into it from 5,000 miles hence, insulates people from the real stars of the show — messy, wild, weird, surprising, and natural. If we truly hope to convince the world that saving these organisms from climate change and resource depletion is important (and it is, not just for their sake, but for our sake: preserving wildlife keeps the climate stable for agriculture and our water clean for drinking), we should shove the organisms themselves out on stage. All you have to do is take a closer look at them, and with suitably skilled and creative interpreters you’ll find, I think, they sell themselves.

* The Centre was also created to specifically house the botany and entomology collections, not any other groups. I apologize for the omission, but I didn’t realize this was the case until an alert reader pointed it out.

A coral relative called a gorgonian -- or in this case, Cousin It -- found off the coast of Moloka'i. Eric Vetter, Craig Smith & the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory

Have you ever wondered what happens to stuff that falls into the ocean from shore? Where does it go? What happens to it? Well, if it’s plastic or something else floaty, it’ll likely end up in some vast floating garbage vortex, as we apparently have, in our apathy, created in several locations on the planet. But what if it’s heavy, like tree nuts, waterlogged PBR cans, or a multimillion-dollar sapphire? The ocean is not a memory hole, and it turns out that (organic) stuff washed into the sea near shore collects in places that can help support a gaggle of interesting creatures.

Though teeming with bacteria and viruses, the Earth’s oceans are largely a desert for mobile megafauna (i.e. big things that swim, walk, crawl, scuttle, or ooze) like sharks, whales, fish, and cephalopods. Coral reefs are a well-known exception, but it turns that where this stuff goes is another darker, deeper source of biodiversity, and we’re not talking about deep-sea hot springs or Cthulu-esque spawning zones. A study in Marine Ecology by scientists at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, found that submarine canyons at remote Pacific islands may act as oases that funnel nutrients (and other debris) to the bottom in a way that creates a smorgasboard for big swimming or crawling things. They wondered if this would be so by analogy with studies of similar canyons on continental margins, but no one had ever looked in the canyons ringing a remote island chain before.

They started using submersibles that videotaped the bottom of canyons and control slopes nearby, but found there were too few things to look at for that to work. So instead, they sent people down in submersibles to essentially sit on either side and look out the window, calling out what they saw as they cruised along (I cannot imagine they had a hard time finding volunteers. I would pay to do that). They studied two groups of islands in the Hawaiian chain — two in the main group (O’ahu and Moloka’i) and two of the teeny tiny obscure northwest isles, Nihoa and Maro Reef, an atoll.

Though they hypothesized that the canyons on big islands would have more biodiversity than the canyons on little islands since there was theoretically more crap to roll off the island and into the canyon, they found this was not so. Nor was total biodiversity higher in canyons than on slopes. But they did find the biodiversity (both counted in absolute abundance and unique species counts) of big swimming or crawling things was enhanced in canyons compared to sedentary or sessile animals. On the other hand, sessile filter-feeders (like Cousin It, above) seemed to do better on the flat slopes between canyons. Why? They don’t know for sure but suspect it’s related to frequent turbidity currents and submarine landslides in canyons. Put simply, you’re less likely to get buried by one of those if you can swim or crawl out of the way. Once done, you are now in position to capitalize on the buffet brought in from above. And what a buffet! Take a look at this picture from the expedition.

Call Diamond: A bonanza of kukui nuts (from the candlenut tree, in the Spurge Family (Euphorbiaceae) in Moloka'i Canyon. Eric Vetter, Craig Smith & the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory

I half expected to see several lost socks and Jimmy Hoffa sticking out of that pile. Consider that this nut bonanza from trees growing on land was discovered 500 meters — 1,500 feet — below the surface! Canyons may also concentrate food by funneling in carcasses that drift from above and by concentrating plankton that migrate up and down over the course of a day.

As for the fantastic Cousin It look-alike they found, he is a gorgonian (or sea whip or sea fan). These little cnidarian high-rises are colonial polyps related to soft corals and sea pens(another of my favorite marine groups) within the phylum Cnidaria, a vast and unbelievably cool group that includes the jellyfish and portuguese men o’painwar. They build a skeleton of protein or calcium within which their little eight-tentacles polyps sit and wait for plankton and other tasty tid-bits to drift by. Some of them can take in algae called zooxanthellae like other coral and work symbiotically with them for food. Others (like those found at 650 m below the surface, like Cousin It) get by only on the sweat of their own tentacles.

Vetter, E., Smith, C., & De Leo, F. (2010). Hawaiian hotspots: enhanced megafaunal abundance and diversity in submarine canyons on the oceanic islands of Hawaii Marine Ecology, 31 (1), 183-199 DOI: 10.1111/j.1439-0485.2009.00351.x

Me and the state I love. Eccles Pass (12,435 ft) in the Gore Range, Colorado, July 3, 2009. Some of the meadows behind me were absolutely COATED with yellow glacier lilies.

I’ve been thinking of what I can do to support this year’s International Year of Biodiversity, and I’ve decided I’d like to take my “Life on Earth” lecture on the road. The talk will not be mere platitudes about biodiversity and its importance; we’re talking specifics — interesting science, weird organisms and their “alternative” lifestyles, beautiful photographs, and more natural history than you can shake a stick at. Basically, more of the same stuff you come to this blog for, plus you’d get to meet me and pick my brain in person.

I’m planning to expand the 25 minute talk I gave last year at the Colorado Skepticamp into something closer to an hour (although half an hour is still an option) that I could give at a few venues around the Front Range (or perhaps farther afield if travel stipends are involved). If you are in a group that would be interested in hearing me talk on the subject of biodiversity and life on Earth, leave a comment to this post or contact me privately at the email address listed on the Portfolio page. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to speak for everyone who makes a request (should there BE any requests : ) ), but all requests will be carefully considered.

I want to show you something. Pull the slider bar across to 1:37 in this clip of the Jim Henson masterpiece and my favorite childhood film, “The Dark Crystal,” and watch until about 2:33.

Amazing, huh? It’s made even more amazing by the fact that all these creatures were real tangible things dreamed up and manufactured by the Jim Henson studio. In the making-of documentary, you can see them assembling them by hand like traditional European craftsmen (many of whose skills they used). This was a movie I watched over and over whenever I could on the gigantic early VCR owned by our neighbors down the road in rural Tennessee when I was 5 or 6. I absolutely loved it, even though the first 5 minutes of the were missing because my neighbors were slow on hitting “record”.  Even little Jen(me) was fascinated by the diversity of life – even imagined life.

Last night I saw Avatar on opening night in 3D on an IMAX screen in Denver, and I got to live this experience all over again.

Avatar is not a movie that is long on brains or wit, even by the standards of other James Cameron films. I wish they’d spent half the time on the script they spent on the visuals. You could also compile a list 20 or 25 items long of elements this movie shares with other Cameron films, from big things like a strong female lead (all films), to a soulless corporation driving evil in the name of profits (Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic; which, by the way, is a major reason yours truly has all her money in “socially responsible” investments) down to really subtle details like a supporting female character who’s really good at operating an unusual vehicle (One Night in the Abyss) or a bad guy fighting the good guy toward the end of the movie in an unbreathable environment in a machine that gets its front window cracked, thus admitting some of the deadly medium (Michael Biehn’s character in the Abyss).

But James Cameron films have their virtues, and they are a passionate attention to detail, a high sense of adventure, protagonists you want to love, and really deadly/exotic/fantastically beautiful aliens. In this film, he’s taken this latter theme, one he started with the fantastic ctenophore-inspired aliens from “The Abyss” (still my favorite Cameron film) and used it to imagine the biodiversity of another world. For those of us fascinated by life, there is a lot to see and wonder at in this film. It provides, as Manohla Dargis of the New York Times says in her review, the big WOW.

Because it’s such a magical experience, I’m not going to give much of it away, except to say it’s obvious these creatures were inspired at least in part by computer geeks, given that they all have USB ports. But Cameron takes the modus operandi of people trying to re-imagine life on other worlds – putting sea creatures on land or making plants animals, ones which Henson and legendary conceptual artist Brian Froud drew on heavily to imagine the world of the Dark Crystal – and takes it up a notch. In one of my first posts I told you the parasite Giardia resembles the love child of a squid and a kernel of corn. In Avatar, you get to find out what happens when a jellyfish and a dandelion make sweet, sweet love.

As has been pointed out by many reviewers, Cameron’s narrative breaks no new ground and simply retells some of America’s classic, and not always proud stories (Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves) with lesser dialogue and characters. Even the facial structure and ears of the blue alien Na’vi strongly recall those of gelflings, above. But oh, what a world in which to retell our stories. For people who are not biodiversity-philes, this movie takes a bit of the wonder that I easily feel crawling around the Colorado forest floor after a good rain or watching D.A. ramble on in his adorable, thick British accent about marine worms and dumps it right in their laps. Cameron was so attentive to detail there are things in “Avatar” for even lichenologists and bryophiles to love. I won’t give it away, but when you first see the rainforest of the forest moon Pandora (wait a minute . . . Endor? Pandora? ) through the avatars’ eyes there is a tiny 3D detail that will take your breath away. Though sadly, this biodiversity afficianado has never been to a real rainforest (it’s up there on my list of dreams along with traveling to the deep sea in a submersible), Avatar puts me as close as I’m likely to get for a while, and it does so in glorious 3D. I’ve never heard so many audible “wows” from an audience, myself included. Thank you, Mr. Cameron.