Background: Three species of Sea Urchin are common in the local waters around Race Rocks and the southern part of Vancouver Island. In this lab we will use the purple or the green urchins for gamete extraction, fertilization and early development to the gastrula stage. The divers have collected a few urchins from the area just outside of Pedder Bay

See the Taxonomy of the purple urchin

1. Sea Urchin Lab
http://www.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/contents.html
Animations
http://www.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/ani-plus.htm
Core lab
http://www.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/first.htm

2. Sea Urchin Fertilization Lab
http://www.sidwell.edu/sidwell.resources/bio/VirtualLB/urchin/sea.html

The following reference is for more advanced study. different ways of imaging are demonstrated.

The Whitaker Lab - Sea Urchins Index
The pages linked above give details our work on Sea Urchins. They use Lytechinus pictus eggs for most experiments due to their relative optical transparency and study them using a variety of microscopic and molecular biological techniques.
The eggs are approximately 100 microns in diameter and so are easily manipulated and visualized under the microscope and as a female urchin can produce up to 1ml of eggs they are also suitable for parallel biochemical studies.

http://petrus.ncl.ac.uk/urchins/index.html

1. Using the resources available design a protocol for investigating sea urchin embryos through the early stages of embryo development.

2. On the first day you will examine eggs, sperm and the fertilized embryo. Draw clear diagram of all stages of development. This may mean coming back a few minutes a day to study the progress up through the diffferent stages.