To Annelid newsletter readers from Peter Olive
Some members of the annelid community may be interested in a cross over from polychaete science to the world of music.
The composer (and poet) John Keffala-Kerr has been commissioned to compose a musical suite to commemorate the artist Wilmslow Homer who for some years worked at Cullercoats in North East England
Details can be found at the following site:
http://johnkefalakerr.com/8bells
There is an interesting link to the work of the polychaete science community. Many of you may know that Pat Hutchings, who is well known to you all, and I did our PhD work under the supervision of Bob Clark at the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats, way back in the 1960's. I have kept close links with Cullercoats and the DML and I am sure Pat has fond memories. John Keffala Kerr wanted to include some links with the Dove Marine Laboratory in his compositional framework and it was a great pleasure for me to talk with him and discuss aspects of polychaete biology. I have always appreciated the 'sad song of the Nereids' which tells of the paradox that in order to achieve life you have to embrace death. Nereis virens can perhaps live for ever but in order to breed must emerge from the safety of its burrow swarm and die - in fact embrace death. This concept and the counterpoint cross rhythms of tidal and circadian periodicity underpin the music. Nereis, like many polychaetes ,can use these rhythms to control the timing of life processes and John has quite brilliantly taken these ideas and turned them to muscial form. John points out in his web page relating to this music that the violinist at times plays from a score directly based on data taken from a paper (Last et al 2006) on the rhythmic behaviour patterns of Nereis virens. Oh and John has written a fine Nereis poem too.
The relevant papers for those interested are:
LAST, K.S. BAILHACHE,T., KRAMER,C., KYRIACOU C.P. ROSATO, E., & OLIVE, P.J.W. (2009
Tidal, daily, and lunar‐day activity cycles in the marine polychaete Nereis virens Chronobiology International, 26: 167-183
OLIVE, P. J. W., C. P. KYRIACOU, K. S. LAST, C. KRAMER, T. BAILHACHE, AND E. ROSATO. 2005. Dancing to the rhythms of geological time: the biorhythm capabilities of Polychaeta in a geological context. Invertebrate Reproduction & Development 48: 197-206.
