By Clarissa, Eric, Magdalena, and Sabrina

Today was all about eating! And I don’t just mean the food that Tom works so hard to prepare. Sea stars and earwigs were the animals chomping away today.

We started off the day with some manipulated experiments in the Lab with the earwigs we collected the day before.  We experimented with different sized females, males, and their individual mate choices. Earwig competition may not sound very exciting or glamorous, but we were in for a surprising show! We were testing whether a small female or a large female would win in a fight for a shelter when one of our large females became vicious. She stabbed the smaller female with her pointed forceps and chewed off the smaller female’s forceps to prevent a counter-attack. With the small female weakened, there was no way for her to prevent the large female from slowly eating her over the course of ten minutes. Although that trial did not give us reliable data about which earwig would take the shelter, it helped us learn a harsh lesson about survival of the fittest in the natural world. We gave the dead earwig a brief send-off and returned to our work.

The set-up for our earwig experiments, featuring a just-molted earwig.

The next meal was a picnic at Friday Harbor Labs. While we ate, Tim Dwyer discussed our final projects. We all are coming up with scientific questions of our own to answer. By Thursday, we’ll have made posters with our findings!

Next on the menu: anemones! We set up an experiment about leather sea stars eating anemones with PhD candidate Chris Wells. For 2 hours, we meticulously observed our echinoderm and cnidarian friends to see who would win the fight. Anemones are surprisingly aggressive little buggers and none of our sea stars managed to subdue a snack.  The sea stars spent most of the time hiding in the corners of the tank while the anemones waved their stinging cells threateningly. Thanks to Chris for some fun hours in the sun!

One of our sea stars climbing the side of the tank to escape the terrifying anemones.

Cornflakes (Evy) and others set up the tanks for the animals.

For the final food of the day, we ate pizza prepared by the dinner prep team. Now, we’re about to chow down on popcorn while watching The Princess and the Frog. We’ll see you all on the other side!