Scintilla

We’re getting toward the end of the second volume of our Emerging Model Organisms series in Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, and November’s issue brings us a look at the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid and the genus Dioscorea, or True Yams. Euprymna scolopes, the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid (our cover model this month, see below) is a cephalopod that’s well-suited for study in the laboratory. E. scolopes is primarily studied in three contexts: 1) as a model for cephalopod development–the embryos and protective chorions are clear, making it amenable for the observations and manipulations common in other studied model systems 2) as a model of animal-bacteria symbioses with the luminous marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri 3) as a system for studying the interaction of tissues with light, as the squid features a specialized light organ.