By Howard Goldstein
Photographs of the vast arid vistas of the Negev Desert in Israel and the red Simpson Desert of Australia are hung above a powerful telescope with which Matt scans the skies in his leisure time. On the family coffee table, the molt of a strange creature adorns the table top.
The exoskeleton of a Caribbean spiny lobster, said Fox, carefully holding up the shell.
It's amazing. They shed their outer shells and leave this perfect replica of the living animal. When I first saw the lobster tank in the Hofstra laboratory, I thought there were twice as many animals as there really were. It's a beautiful creature, he said.
A scientist and nature lover, Matt was chosen last summer to enroll in the Summer Science Research Program at Hofstra University, which directly led to his entry into Siemens.
The study, "Identification of Chemosensory Sensilla Activating Antennular Flick Behavior in the Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Panulirus argus," was under Dr. Peter Daniel, a world authority on lobsters, and involved Fox and his partner Sagar Mehta, of Roslyn Heights.
The Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, is widespread across the Caribbean Sea as far north as southern Florida. An agile and nocturnal carnivore in coral reefss, Panulirus is heavily defended by a spiny shell and armed with wicked tail spikes that the crustacean lashes at its predators.
Unlike the American lobster ( Homarus americanus) of the north Atlantic, the Caribbean spiny lobster lacks claws, its first set of five pairs of legs modified into very long tapering sense organs. They also have a set of antennae through which the crustacean senses both chemicals and vibrations.
The lobsters filter chemical agents from the water by what's called
