Genus Marine Spider Sericosa
Biance Dal Bó
Creatures similar to spiders living near Methane are filtered in the seabed seem to cultivate and consume microbial species in their bodies that feed on energy rich in energy. This expands the set of organisms that are known that depend on symbiotic relationships with microbes to live in these environments from another world.
Shana Goffredi in Western College in California and his colleagues collected marine spiders, marine arthropods with the name of their similarity with the arachnids, living about three different methane leaks in the Pacific Ocean. They found three previously unknown species of the genus of the sea spider Sericosa That seems to be abundant only close to gas filtration thesis.
Other types of sea spiders who do not live near the leaks are largely eaten to other invertebrates. But researchers found that new sea spiders seem to obtain most of their nutrition by eating a distinctive set of bacterial species that live in their bodies. These bacteria harvest energy by metabolizing methane and methanol from leaks, energy that would otherwise be inaccessible to marine spiders.
The researchers found that bacteria were limited to spiders’s exoskeletons as a “microbial leather layer”, growing in what Goffredi describes as “volcano” groups. The bacterial growth layers also had marques as cutting tracks where spiders may have eaten with the theme of their hard “lips” and three small teeth.
To confirm that maritime spiders were really eating bacteria, researchers also used a radioactive labeling technique to track carbon into methane was consumed by sea spiders in the laboratory. “We saw that methane enter the microbes that are on the surface of the spiders, and then we saw that the carbon molecule moves to the spider tissues,” says Goffredi.
Researchers do not believe that sea spiders are simply eating what happens to grow in their exoskeletons.. Because the species that live in exoskeletons are different from what is generally found in the environment, suggests that a son of a selection process is played, says Goffredi. “Spiders are definitely cultivating and cultivating a very special type of community.”
Sea spiders would be the first organisms to cultivate microbes to access chemical energy. “Every time we look [at ecosystems around methane seeps]We are finding this more and more, ”says Erik Cordes, from the University of Temple in Pennsylvania. Bete -chombine and abetrates and abetrates and abdominals and abdominates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetrates and abetators Abetos.
CORDES points out that the bacteria can also win riding in the bodies of the sea spiders. Not very different from cows in a ranch, they get protection and access to better pastures. For example, if a methane filtration changes to a different part of the seabed, sea spiders could move the bacteria to the new source. “Marine spiders keep them in the perfect habitat,” he says.
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