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Egg mass of the sepiolid squid Euprymna scolopes
Egg mass of the sepiolid squid Euprymna scolopes.
Female squid lay clutches of 100 to 200 eggs on coral rubble and cover them with a layer of sand. After about 20 days, juvenile animals hatch and are immediately ready to become colonized by Vibrio fischeri cells, a marine bacteria that are present in the surrounding seawater.
The National Science Foundation's Division of Integrative Biology and Neuroscience's Developmental Mechanisms program awarded a grant to Margaret McFall-Ngai, professor and principal investigator, for her studies on the relationship between the Hawaiian sepiolid squid Euprymna scolopes and its luminous bacterial partner Vibrio fischeri. Although all animals have beneficial associations with microbes, the association between Euprymna scolopes and Vibrio fischeri is the only experimental model available to biologists so far. (Year of image: 1991) [One of four related images. See Next Image.]
Credit: M. J. McFall-Ngai and E. G. Ruby, University of Hawaii
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