Antidepressants Make Shrimps See the Light

Rising levels of antidepressants in coastal waters could change sea-life behaviour and potentially damage the food-chain, according to a new study.

Research into the behaviour of shrimps exposed to the antidepressant fluoxetine, showed that their behaviour is dramatically affected. The shrimps are five times more likely to swim toward the light instead of away from it -- making them more likely to be eaten by fish or birds, which could have devastating effects on the shrimp population.

"Crustaceans are crucial to the food chain and if shrimps' natural behaviour is being changed because of antidepressant levels in the sea this could seriously upset the natural balance of the ecosystem," said Dr Alex Ford from the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Marine Sciences.

"Much of what humans consume you can detect in the water in some concentration. We're a nation of coffee drinkers and there is a huge amount of caffeine found in waste water, for example. It's no surprise that what we get from the pharmacy will also be contaminating the country's waterways."

The research is published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. The study found that the shrimps' behaviour changes when they are exposed to the same levels of fluoxetine found in the waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries as a result of the drugs humans excrete in sewage.

Dr Ford's research was motivated by a species of parasite which can alter the behaviour of aquatic creatures through changing serotonin levels within the brains of the organisms. Serotonin is a neuro-hormone found in many animals, including humans, known to control types of behaviour, such as modulating mood and decreasing anxiety.

Drugs to combat depression in humans are often designed to target levels of serotonin which led to the question of whether they could also alter the behaviour of marine organisms.

Dr Ford said: "Effluent is concentrated in river estuaries and coastal areas, which is where shrimps and other marine life live -- this means that the shrimps are taking on the excreted drugs of whole towns."

Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen rapidly in recent years, according to the Office for National Statistics. In 2002, there were 26.3 million antidepressant prescriptions handed out by doctors in England and Wales -- yet the environmental effect of pharmaceuticals in sewage has been largely unexplored.

Dr Ford is hoping to carry out future research on a number of other prescribed drugs on the market known to affect serotonin.

Head of the School of Biological Sciences, Professor Matt Guille, said: "Dr Ford has conducted some beautifully simple research, which potentially shows huge ecological consequences. I hope it will lead the way for further study of prescribed drugs and other substances impacting on the country's marine-life." Yasmin Guler, Alex T. Ford. Anti-depressants make amphipods see the light. Aquatic Toxicology, 2010; DOI:10.1016/j.aquatox.2010.05.019

Surprise Shrimp Under Antarctic Ice

At a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, a small shrimp-like creature managed to brighten up an otherwise gray polar day in late November 2009.

This critter is a three-inch long Lyssianasid amphipod found beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, about 12.5 miles away from open water.
NASA scientists were using a borehole camera to look back up towards the ice surface when they spotted this pinkish-orange creature swimming beneath the ice.

Shrimp trawl "excluder" cuts marine bycatch up to 40 percent

A new law requiring shrimp fishers in the South American department of France to use devices that reduce unwanted fish catch will help better protect marine turtles and other vulnerable marine species in the region, WWF said in a news statement last night.
Widespread use of the new TTED, which took three years to develop, will greatly reduce bycatch among shrimp trawlers, WWF said. In French Guiana,
"Tropical shrimp fisheries represent a major source of undesired bycatch. Without a bycatch-reduction device in place, shrimp represents only 10 to 30 percent of the total catch, meaning the rest is made up of other marine species," the Switzerland-based conservation charity said.

Nearly half of the world's recorded fish catch is unused, wasted or not accounted for, according to estimates in a scientific paper co-authored by WWF, published last year. The paper, Defining and Estimating Global Marine Fisheries Bycatch, calculated that each year at least 38 million tonnes of fish, constituting at least 40 percent of what is taken from oceans by fishing activities, is unmanaged or unused and should be considered bycatch.

The TTED is an improvement of a previous device, the Turtle Excluder Device, that consists of a rigid grill inserted at a 45 degrees angle in the trawl with an opening toward the top or bottom, WWF said. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) has documented a 97 percent reduction in marine turtle captures through using the previous device, and additional TED studies conducted internationally have shown a reduction in large marine organism bycatch of as much as 91 percent.
The latest version of the excluder combines the advantages of different systems and has been found to reduce all bycatch by 25 to 40 percent.
The device also has some practical advantages for the shrimp fishers. It reduces sorting time and risks of injury due to sharks and rays being caught, WWF said. "The new gear also improves the quality of shrimps, which are less likely to be crushed in the bottom of the trawl, and may also lead to a reduction in the amount of fuel consumed by the boats."

The TTED is the culmination of years of research. With funding provided by the European Union and the DIREN (Regional Environmental Authorities), WWF commissioned a study from IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) to determine which selective gear was the most adapted to fishing conditions in French Guiana. The initial trials, conducted under experimental conditions, were carried out on board a shrimp trawler.
"Following this work, shrimp industry members expressed the need to continue these experiments and to become more involved in the project. In response, WWF and the French Guiana Regional Fishery and Ocean Farming Commission began working in close collaboration in order to determine the best gear for the French Guiana fleet," WWF said.
"With technical support from NOAA and IFREMER, the Commission carried out numerous at sea trials in close collaboration with French Guiana fleets. Specific parameters where tested such as the shape and spacing between the bars of the selective grid. These trials allowed the fleets and the crews onboard the shrimp trawlers to understand the advantages of a more selective fishing gear and the benefits of using it in French Guiana.
"Based on the results and the captains' recommendations, the Commission decided to make the use of this TTED system mandatory by January 2010, when the annual fishing licences are issued."
The TTED was developed with the assistance of IFREMER, NOAA, French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Région Guyane, and the European Fund for Fisheries (FEP).

Mantis Shrimp Eyes Could Show Way To Better DVD And CD players

The remarkable eyes of a marine crustacean could inspire the next generation of DVD and CD players, according to a new study from the University of Bristol published today in Nature Photonics.

The mantis shrimps in the study are found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and have the most complex vision systems known to science. They can see in twelve colours (humans see in only three) and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light.
Special light-sensitive cells in mantis shrimp eyes act as quarter-wave plates -- which can rotate the plane of the oscillations (the polarization) of a light wave as it travels through it. This capability makes it possible for mantis shrimps to convert linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa. Manmade quarter-wave plates perform this essential function in CD and DVD players and in circular polarizing filters for cameras.
However, these artificial devices only tend to work well for one colour of light while the natural mechanism in the mantis shrimp's eyes works almost perfectly across the whole visible spectrum -- from near-ultra violet to infra-red.
Dr Nicholas Roberts, lead author of the Nature Photonics paper said: "Our work reveals for the first time the unique design and mechanism of the quarter-wave plate in the mantis shrimp's eye. It really is exceptional -- out-performing anything we humans have so far been able to create."
Exactly why the mantis shrimp needs such exquisite sensitivity to circularly polarized light isn't clear. However, polarization vision is used by animals for sexual signalling or secret communication that avoids the attention of other animals, especially predators. It could also assist in the finding and catching of prey by improving the clarity of images underwater. If this mechanism in the mantis shrimp provides an evolutionary advantage, it would be easily selected for as it only requires small changes to existing properties of the cell in the eye.
"What's particularly exciting is how beautifully simple it is," Dr Roberts continued. "This natural mechanism, comprised of cell membranes rolled into tubes, completely outperforms synthetic designs.
"It could help us make better optical devices in the future using liquid crystals that have been chemically engineered to mimic the properties of the cells in the mantis shrimp's eye."
This wouldn't be the first time humans have looked to the natural world for new ideas, for example the lobster's compound eye recently inspired the design of an X-ray detector for an astronomical telescope.
The mantis shrimp research was conducted at the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences in collaboration with colleagues at UMBC, USA and the University of Queensland, Australia.
Journal reference:
NW Roberts, T-H Chiou, NJ Marshall and TW Cronin. A biological quarter-wave retarder with excellent achromaticity in the visible wavelength region. Nature Photonics, 2009; DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2009.189
Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol.

'Shrimp Shell Cocktail' To Fuel Cars And Trucks

Call it a "shrimp cocktail" for your fuel tank. Scientists in China are reporting development of a catalyst made from shrimp shells that could transform production of biodiesel fuel into a faster, less expensive, and more environmentally friendly process.

Xinsheng Zheng and colleagues note that an energy-hungry world, concerned about global warming, increasingly puts its future fuel hopes on renewable fuels like biodiesel. Today's biodiesel production processes, however, require catalysts to speed up the chemical reactions that transform soybean, canola, and other plant oils into diesel fuel. Traditional catalysts cannot be reused and must be neutralized with large amounts of water — another increasingly scarce resource — leaving behind large amounts of polluted wastewater.
The researchers describe development of a new catalyst produced from shrimp shells. In laboratory tests, the shrimp shell catalysts converted canola oil to biodiesel (89 percent conversion in three hours) faster and more efficiently than some conventional catalysts. The new catalysts also can be reused and the process minimizes waste production and pollution, the scientists note.
Journal reference:
Linguo Yang, Aiqing Zhang and Xinsheng Zheng. Shrimp Shell Catalyst for Biodiesel Production. Energy & Fuels, Online July 13, 2009 [link]
Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

For Northern Shrimp Populations In North Atlantic, Timing Is Everything

Even for Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis), which support commercial fisheries worldwide, timing is everything in life. The tiny creatures, eaten in shrimp rolls and shrimp salad, occupy a pivotal role in the oceanic food chain and may serve as early indicators of changing climate due to their sensitivity to temperature. Northern shrimp also seem to have an uncanny sense of reproductive timing, releasing their larvae to match the arrival of food and thus maximizing larval survival.In a study to be published May 8 in the journal Science, Anne Richards of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and international colleagues evaluated the timing of the annual shrimp hatch between 1998 and 2007 in populations or stocks at different latitudes across the North Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Norway. The researchers also estimated the timing of spring phytoplankton blooms - the major source of food for the shrimp larvae - in each location using satellite images that show biological productivity in surface waters, commonly called ocean color."In the Gulf of Maine we have seen years when there is a good match in timing between when shrimp larvae are released and when the annual spring bloom begins. In these years larvae tend to have high survival rates, resulting in large year classes and a very successful fishery," said Richards, who has been studying Northern shrimp for almost two decades. "In other years that timing is off, leading to lower survival rates and a poorer fishery. The match or mismatch between the larvae and their food appears to be a key factor in shrimp production."The Science study looked at stocks of Northern shrimp, also called pink shrimp, in the Gulf of Maine, on the Scotian Shelf and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off Newfoundland and Labrador, on the Flemish Cap, off western Greenland and Northern Iceland, in the Barents Sea and off Svalbard, a group of islands between Norway and the North Pole.The spring phytoplankton bloom occurs at different times in different latitudes because sunlight and sea surface temperatures, the primary triggers for onset of blooms, vary among regions. The researchers found a surprising tendency in each location for the shrimp eggs to hatch and the larvae to appear just as the bloom arrived."The interesting thing is that the timing of the hatch is strongly dependent on temperature on the ocean bottom, but the timing of the bloom is a function of several factors, including temperature throughout the water column and available sunlight," Richards said. "Yet, on average, in most of these locations, there is a close match between the hatch and the bloom. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, but it is still surprising. Before the advent of satellite imagery, it would have been very difficult to be able to demonstrate this phenomenon across a wide geographic area."The time it takes for shrimp eggs to develop into young shrimp, or larvae, varies significantly depending on local bottom water temperatures. In the southern Gulf of Maine off Cape Cod, the waters are relatively warm and shrimp eggs take six months to hatch, while in the cold waters off Northern Iceland the eggs take 9-10 months to hatch. This suggests that the time of mating must have evolved so the larvae are ready to hatch near the time of the bloom under average temperature conditions for each area.Northern shrimp may serve as an early indicator of the impact of climate change since their life cycle is very temperature dependent. The species breeds once a year, usually in the summer/fall, with the female carrying eggs on her abdomen much like lobsters do until they hatch the following winter/spring. Although the shrimp live most of their life in colder bottom waters, once the eggs hatch the young shrimp live near the surface for several months feeding on phytoplankton and larger zooplankton.The authors say changing climate may increase bottom water temperatures, resulting in shorter development times for the eggs. If so, the eggs may hatch too early and be too far ahead of the spring bloom for optimum survival. However, they also say this "mismatch" in timing might not occur if warmer sea surface temperatures result in earlier spring blooms.Richards is testing the "match-mismatch" hypothesis suggested in this study in more detail in her own research on the Gulf of Maine shrimp stock. So far, she has found a strong relationship between water temperatures, the timing and amount of plankton in surface waters, and shrimp survival rates."The warming trends evident in the waters in the Northeast U.S. are likely to have an impact on shrimp recruitment and survival," Richards said. "Shrimp production may be much more variable in the future as the Gulf of Maine warms. The population there may ultimately decline if temperatures continue to increase unless the shrimp can adapt."Lead author of the study was Peter Koeller of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Canada. In addition to Richards, other authors were from the United Kingdom, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway. Richards work was supported in part by the Fisheries and the Environment (FATE) program at the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service.NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service.

Weird Shrimp Has Astounding Vision

A Swiss marine biologist and an Australian quantum physicist have found that a species of shrimp from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, can see a world invisible to all other animals।

Dr Sonja Kleinlogel and Professor Andrew White have shown that mantis shrimp not only have the ability to see colours from the ultraviolet through to the infrared, but have optimal polarisation vision -- a first for any animal and a capability that humanity has only achieved in the last decade using fast computer technology.
"The mantis shrimp is a delightfully weird beastie," said Professor White, of the University of Queensland. "They're multi-coloured, their genus and species names mean 'mouth-feet' and 'genital-fingers'; they can move each eye independently, they see the world in 11 or 12 primary colours as opposed to our humble three, and now we find that this species can see a world invisible to the rest of us."
Dr Kleinlogel, is based at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, and collected the shrimp from the reef. She notes that, "...scuba divers know them as 'thumb-splitters', they've got wickedly strong claws and are very aggressive!"
Most animals can tell how fast the electric field in a light wave is oscillating, which is perceived as colour. (Blue light oscillates faster than green, which is faster than red). The direction of the oscillation is known as polarisation: many animals, from budgerigars to ants have some form of polarisation vision. Since the 1950s, animals have been shown to use linear polarisation vision for navigation, for finding food, for evading hunters, and for sex, or as Professor White says, "...for the four fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing and...flirting."
Commonly, polarisation vision is quite restricted: in its simplest form, different directions of polarisation show up as lighter or darker patches -- you can see this yourself by looking at clear blue sky with polarising sunglasses. But polarisation is more subtle than this: the electric field of the light can oscillate back and forth in a line or around and around in a circle, or anywhere in between.
The two scientists have shown that shrimp of the species Gonodactylus smithii have eyes that simultaneously measure four linear and two circular polarisations, enabling them to determine both the direction of the oscillation, as well as how polarised the light is.
"This is very useful because natural light can vary from strongly polarised, like the glare off snow or water, to unpolarised, like the sun," Professor White said.
"Any changes to the amount of polarisation instantly tells the animal that something is going on."
Colleagues at The University of Queensland have recently found a related species where the males reflect circular polarisation from their bodies, and hypothesized that circular polarisation vision is used for sexual signalling. Professor White smiles and says, "I think of that as the 'prawnographic' hypothesis."
He continues, "It can't be the whole story in our case, though. We found the same structures in the eyes of both boy and girl mantis shrimps, and yet neither have circularly polarised markings on their bodies. Each eye measures the six polarisation components that are precisely required for optimal polarisation vision. In fact, the physics we used to understand what was going on is the same physics that we use in quantum computing for optimal storage of information."
"It is this unique talent -- to measure linear and circular polarisation simultaneously -- which presents a completely new concept of polarisation vision," Dr Kleinlogel continues. "There wouldn't be much point in only being able to see circular polarisation as it is extremely rare in nature. Even the polarized light reflected from some shrimp's bodies is only weakly circular polarised and often contains more linear polarisation."
"We doubt that circular polarisation is used exclusively as a secret shrimp sex signal! It makes more sense that mantis shrimp evolved both circular and linear polarisation receptors to work together so they can detect tiniest changes in any polarisation."
Prof. White notes, "Some of the animals they like to eat are transparent, and quite hard to see in sea-water - except they're packed full of polarising sugars - I suspect they light up like Christmas trees as far as these shrimp are concerned." "And of course," Dr Kleinlogel concludes, "they can still flirt with each other using fancy polarisation cues!"
Journal reference:
Kleinlogel S, White AG (2008) The Secret World of Shrimps: Polarisation Vision at Its Best. PLoS One 3(5): e2190. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002190 [link]
Adapted from materials provided by University of Queensland.

Mantis Shrimp Vision Reveals New Way That Animals Can See

Mantis shrimp can see the world in a way that had never been observed in any animal before, researchers report in the March 20th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication। The discovery--which marks the fourth type of visual system--suggests that the ability to perceive circular polarized light may lend mantis shrimp a secret mode of communication.

"Mantis shrimp ventured into a new dimension of vision," said Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland in Australia. Also known as stomatopods, mantis shrimp are large and particularly violent marine crustaceans that aren't actually a kind of shrimp but look something like one.
Marshall describes circular polarized light as a spiraling beam that spins either to the left or the right. Scientists had shown before that some animals, such as scarab beetles, reflect that kind of light, but they hadn't shown that any animal could actually see it--until now, that is.
"It's complicated physics," Marshall said, "but that makes it all the more amazing that some animals would use it for something." Using it required the stomatopods to evolve a kind of filter in their eyes oriented at a precise 45 degree angle to photoreceptors underneath that pick up on linearly polarized light. The filter turns the circularly polarized light into its linear form. Many animals make use of linearly polarized light, Marshall said. To people, however, it is only glare, hence the need for polarized sun glasses.
In the new study, the researchers describe the anatomical basis for stomatopods' remarkable vision in detail and show that these structures are stimulated when circular polarized light shines into them. They also offer behavioral proof of the stomatopods' ability by training them to associate either left-handed or right-handed circular polarized light (L-CPL or R-CPL) with a food reward.
During tests, when no food was present, the researchers presented the animals with two feeding tubes, one reflecting L-CPL and the other R-CPL. The stomatopods chose the tube reflecting the CPL handedness to which they had originally been trained at levels significantly above chance, the researchers found.
Although it's not yet clear exactly what the mantis shrimps' newfound visual ability is good for in nature, Marshall said it's likely all about sex.
Stomatopods are known to use highly specialized color and linear polarization signals for complex social interactions, he noted. And by using circular-polarization imaging, his team has identified three species of stomatopods (within the genus Odontodactus) where CPL is reflected from the cuticles of males but not females. Those sex-specific reflective areas are on parts of the body that stomatopods frequently use for behavioral displays.
"The precise role that these signals, visible to a CPL visual system, play in stomatopod sexual signaling is not yet known, but we speculate that these CPL reflections could act as a secret communication channel," the researchers concluded. "Linear polarization signals, used by marine invertebrates, are visible to animals like cephalopods that prey on stomatopods and are therefore open to exploitation. Also, other genera of stomatopods that we have examined have variable CPL sensitivity, and may be unable to view the sexual displays of Odontodactylus species, making this a private channel of communication, unavailable to both predators and potential stomatopod competitors.
"Whatever the use of CPL signals and CPL vision to stomatopods, comparing design features of their CPL reflectors and sensors to those of man-made systems will be interesting," they added. "Humans use CPL filters and imaging in everyday photography, medical photography, and object-detection systems in turbid environments. The reefs and waters that many stomatopods inhabit are often turbid, and it is perhaps no surprise that, perhaps as long as 400 million years ago (when stomatopod crustaceans first appeared), nature got there first."
The researchers include Tsyr-Huei Chiou, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD; Sonja Kleinlogel, Sensory Neurobiology Group, Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Tom Cronin, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD; Roy Calwell, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Birte Loeffler, Sensory Neurobiology Group, Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Afsheen Siddiqi, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD;
Alan Goldizen, Sensory Neurobiology Group, Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; and Justin Marshall, Sensory Neurobiology Group, Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
This work was supported by grants from the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Australian Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the Swiss National Foundation.
Journal reference: Chiou et al.: "Circular Polarization Vision in a Stomatopod Crustacean." Publishing in Current Biology 18, 1--6, March 25, 2008. DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.066.
Adapted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

New Insight Into Lethal Shrimp Viral Disease

Researchers report the most complete list so far of proteins present in a virus that causes severe shrimp mortality and significant economic losses to shrimp cultivation worldwide। This discovery could help understand how the virus is assembled and how it infects shrimps.

White spot syndrome is a viral infection of shrimps that is highly lethal and contagious, killing shrimps within 7 to 10 days. In 1993, this disease resulted in a virtual collapse of the Chinese shrimp farming industry and, by 1996, it had severely affected East and South Asia. The disease was reported in the United States in late 1995. Although no treatment for the disease is available yet, scientists have been studying the proteins that make up the virus to understand how it infects shrimps and avoids their immune system.
Choy-Leong Hew and colleagues showed that the virus is assembled by at least 58 proteins, including 13 proteins which are reported for the first time. The scientists also localized 33 of the proteins on the envelope, which is the membrane surrounding the virus, and nine proteins in the nucleocapsid, the core of the virus that contains its genetic material.
Although Hew and colleagues do not know yet how these proteins work together, their localization in the virus is shedding light on some of their functions and will help determine which ones could be targeted by antiviral drugs.
Article: "Shotgun Identification of the Structural Proteome of Shrimp White Spot Syndrome Virus and iTRAQ Differentiation of Envelope and Nucleocapsid Subproteomes," by Zhengjun Li, Qingsong Lin, Jing Chen, Jin Lu Wu, Teck Kwang Lim, Siew See Loh, Xuhua Tang, and Choy-Leong Hew, Molecular & Cellular Proteomics Sept. 2007
Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Invasive species at Lake Ontario

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Another invasive species, a half-inch long ravenous shrimp from Eurasia, has been found in Lake Ontario, raising concerns among scientists that the tiny crustacean could mean dire consequences for the lake's food chain. The discovery of bloody red mysid — whose scientific name is Hemimysis anomala — was made in a lake sample taken near Oswego last spring, said Chuck O'Neill, Jr., an invasive species specialist with New York Sea Grant and a member of New York State's Invasive Species Task Force, on Wednesday.Its only other confirmed appearance in the Great Lakes region was last November in a channel of Muskegon Lake, which empties into Lake Michigan.The red mysid is closely related to the possum shrimp that live in the Great Lakes. It is native to the Caspian Sea and Black Sea areas of Eurasia — the same region that sent zebra mussels, quagga mussels and gobies, other invasive species, to the Great Lakes. Like most non-native species in the Great Lakes, the red mysid is presumed to have arrived in the ballast of oceangoing ships.The shrimp has already been documented in parts of Europe. The red mysid has "strong potential" to severely affect the lake's food chain, O'Neill said.Typically, the shrimp feast on phytoplankton and zooplankton, the foundation of the lake's food chain. Zooplankton are also what many young fish thrive on."Hemimysis is an opportunistic predator. They will eat whatever is available, which means they will be infringing on the food sources for other species," O'Neill said. So far, scientists have found red mysid only off Nine Mile Point in eastern Lake Ontario, but they are likely more widespread."The Lake Ontario discovery included both juvenile and adult Hemimysis, suggesting that the population has had time to establish itself and reproduce in Lake Ontario," O'Neill said.David MacNeill, a fisheries specialist with New York Sea Grant, said Lake Ontario offers a friendly habitat for the red mysid, which prefers warm, shallow waters with rocky bottoms and likes to swim near the shore and near piers."It's hard to make predictions," said MacNeill, noting that there are a number of species of fish that will eat the red mysid, which could balance some of their negative influence."But whenever you introduce a non-native species, it is a game of environmental Russian roulette. Something bad is likely to happen, the question is just how bad that something will be," MacNeill said.Scientists, meanwhile, are asking the public's help to catalog the extent of the red mysid invasion. A fact sheet is being prepared to help shoreline residents and Great Lakes users spot Hemimysis, often seen as a large reddish swarm in the water, said David Reid, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Center for Research on Aquatic Invasive Species. Research technicians will collect samples for confirmation.Exotic species documented in the Great Lakes now number at least 185, with new invaders discovered at a rate of one every eight months, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.