Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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A Lecture on the Mating Habits of Sea Slugs, + Fol Chen
Friday May 30th
8pm
FREE!
“A slug’s life: sex, color, and new species in the sea” by Patrick Krug
and!
A concert by Fol Chen
Far from your garden-variety, sea slugs are vividly colorful animals that display stunning adaptations to life in the ocean. While snails cower inside cumbersome shells, evolution has freed the slugs to cruise the sea in safety, sporting spectacular warning colors to signal they are not to be trifled with.
Some feed with impunity on poisonous animals, concentrating toxins or stingers from their food into their own bodies for defense. Others are the ultimate vegetarians, incorporating living parts of seaweed cells into their bodies, allowing them to live directly off of sunlight.
Patrick Krug studies them as a way to understand how new species form in the sea, and how global warming causes range shifts among coastal organisms — but mainly, he’s drawn to their dramatic sex lives. Patrick’s talk will explore the world of frustrated virgins, slug swingers, and inappropriate sex between species, illustrated with videos and slides sure to shock the more prudish of terrestrial vertebrates.
Any terrestrial vertebrates who remain unfazed by the sex lives of slugs will be rewarded with a concert by Fol Chen after the lecture.