Life on a Lobster Mouth

Symbion pandora is a microscopic animal that lives exclusively on the mouth-parts of lobsters. When we think of a life-cycle, we usually think of a baby growing into an adult, a female mating with a male, and then the female giving birth to a baby. But as Symbion pandora demonstrates, this isn't always the case. Symbion pandora undergoes both asexual and sexual reproduction. Its life cycle is especially interesting because the timing of its sexual reproduction matches the moulting of its lobster host. This allows Symbion pandora to move from the lobster's old shell to its new one, a remarkable solution to the problem of a temporary home. First described in 1995 by Peter Funchand Reinhardt Kristensen, Symbion pandora's life-cycle provides insight on the incredible diversity and range in the ways organisms grow and reproduce.

Video and narration by Natividad Chen. The background music is a compilation of Bach's Cello Suite 1 Prelude and Bach's Flute Sonata 2, both played by Felipe Sarro. This podcast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

--NChen

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