ROB NEWMAN
In our series about people with a passion for a species, we ask comedian and author Rob Newman why he is fascinated by the Hawaiian bobtail squid.
What’s so interesting about Hawaiian bobtail squid?
Found in the Hawaiian archipelago, this squid creates an extraordinary light show that it uses for camouf lage. The cephalopod is able to become ‘invisible’ thanks to a symbiosis with bioluminescent marine bacteria called Vibrio fischeri, which live inside its light organ. It works like this: sharks search for shadows cast by prey; sensors on the squid’s mantle measure the intensity of moonlight and project an equal beam from their light organ; the brightness below is matched to that above – all the shark sees is what looks like a single unbroken moonbeam. It’s incredible!
What triggers the light show?
The squid- Vibrio symbiosis has caused marine biologists to investigate, among other things, a fascinating process called quorum sensing: only once the density of Vibrio reaches a critical mass, or quorum, do the bacteria all turn on their lights, and then the light show can begin. This is thought to be made possible by a molecule known as an autoinducer, which allows the
Vibrio to communicate and ‘perform’ in unison. I would love to know its secrets!
The squid can become ‘invisible’ thanks to a symbiosis with bacteria.
Why did you take your comedy in a biological direction?
Given that so much of our culture seems to be obsessed with dead and lifeless things – Mars, motors and what have you – I find it a joy to focus on the living world. It led me to write Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution, which challenges the macho ding- dong that natural selection is all about
tooth-and-nail competition.
Your BBC Radio 4 show, The Extinction Tapes, tells the stories of species wiped from the planet. What have you learnt?
I am not sure that there is a single lesson, but there are, perhaps, common themes to several extinctions: one is connectivity of habitat. The drastic reduction of an animal’s ability to traverse their full geographic range has proved catastrophic for species such as the Yangtze river dolphin (pronounced extinct in 2007) and Miss Waldron’s red colobus, which was listed as being possibly extinct by the IUCN in 2019.
What can be done to prevent future extinctions?
It is not as if we don’t know what needs to be done. These aren’t baffling mysteries of nature. Plants and animals are not, for the most part, succumbing to strange inexplicable diseases. We already know what to do – stop stealing their habitats. Community-led management initiatives that give local people control of forests and powers to protect them from exploitation give me optimism that we will save some species on the brink: the white-thighed colobus or the Roloway monkey for example. It may, however, be too late to save species such as the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise in China.