photographist

“I fall in love with marine animals when I was eleven, when I dissected a mussel  for the first time at school; we had to add labels for each organ stuck with a pin. I had fallen in love with marine molluscs and decided from that date forward to work on them. At the beginning of my masters, I asked Renata Boucher-Rodoni to be my supervisor for a lab internship. She accepted but specified beforehand : “ I have to make clear that my research subject is cephalopods… ” as if it was something horrible that would put me off. I responded “ Wonderful, it sounds fun! “. My story with cephalopods had begun. I loved them immediately, even if my present job is to cut them in very small pieces in order to extract DNA. We now study the embryos of cuttlefish. At hatching, a small animal 1cm in length comes out. It is completely identical to the adult - with a lot of colours - and adopts the same mode of life.

An exchange of looks with a cuttlefish is both deep and exceptional. It has eyes analogous to vertebrates and is able to produce melanin, like us. The direction of my first research work concerned the development of their nervous system. This nervous system is very elaborate in its form and function. They have a true brain enclosed in a cartilaginous capsule and information is prioritized between the different lobes. In France there is very little interest in them, although they are very sensitive to environmental variations during their biological cycle. The cuttlefish attach their eggs close to the shoreline, in the intertidal area where there are a lot of physical-chemical constraints in term of light, temperature, salinity and sometimes human pollutants. If the ecological conditions are outside the tolerance range, all the eggs die : the cycle is interrupted with disastrous consequences for the stock. Since the cuttlefish lives only 18 months it has only one breeding season.”

Laure Bonnaud-Ponticelli
MNHN, Senior lecturer, University of Paris-Diderot

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