Cirripedes lost their typical crustacean heart during evolution and had to re-invent one when they began to live between the tides.
Barnacle Heart
I was delighted to write about barnacles because they were one of the first animals I studied seriously. My very first academic publication (Blatchford, J.G.: Possible circulatory mechanism in an operculate cirripede. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 34, 911-915 (1970)) told how I discovered that some of them have evolved their own type of heart.
Darwin’s Footsteps
As a young research student I was pleased to find that I was in some small way following in Charles Darwin’s footsteps. When he returned from his trip round the world on The Beagle he decided that he needed to become an authority on some sort of creature before he started to tell the world about his theory of evolution. He chose to study barnacles and immersed himself in the subject for eight years (finally writing the definitive monograph in 1851 – the year my house in France was built!). It was so much a part of his life that one of his daughters is reputed to have asked one of her young friends ‘where does your daddy do his barnacles?’.
Unfortunately I have never been quite as obsessive as Darwin and my initial barnacle studies rapidly gave way to investigating the adaptations other inhabitants of the rocky shore, but barnacles retain a special place in my heart!
