FerssMon

26/11/2021

Christmas Tree Worms Stay Spirited All Year
Families that celebrate Christmas will likely have a colorful tree lighting up their living room right now. But under the sea, millions of Christmas tree worms remain festive all year. Christmas tree worms, whose scientific name is Spirobranchus giganteus, have two spiraled crowns on their back that each resemble a tiny colorful Christmas tree.

These “trees” can be a single solid color but are also often multi-toned, with a second color gracing the outer tips of their spirals like garland. And these worms don’t restrict themselves to red and green. Some are a brilliant blue or bright yellow, while others might be white with orange tips, ruby with white tips, gold with maroon and white tips or any number of other combinations.

These colorful spirals help the worm breathe and catch food. The worms anchor themselves to coral and use the feather-like tentacles protruding from their spirals to catch tiny prey from the surrounding water and move it to the worm’s mouth. If the worm is startled, it retreats into burrows in the coral to hide from possible predators.

Over time, these burrows in the coral can reach 10 inches in length, providing a roomy hiding place for a critter that lives up to 30 years. These worms also help coral recover more quickly from bleaching events and protect it from predators. In fact, in perhaps a bit of an ironic twist, scientists have seen Christmas tree worms literally push away the feet of predatory crown of thorns starfish.

26/11/2021

Purple, Pink and Blue—and They’re All New
One is purple, one is pink, and one is blue, and it took 40 scientists from 17 countries to find them, more than 4 miles below the ocean’s surface. They are three new species of snailfish discovered in one of the deepest places on earth, the bottom of the Atacama Trench off the coast of Peru and Chile.

A team led by researchers at Newcastle University in England has been exploring the deepest parts of the ocean with specialized landers fitted with HD cameras and traps. The landers free-fall to the ocean floor, in this case 24,600 feet below the surface, take photographic and video images, and collect samples. The devices collect data for up to 24 hours before the researchers send an acoustic signal that releases weights in the lander, allowing it to float to the surface so the researchers can collect their scientific b***y.

This research group has already deployed such devices more than 250 times and discovered new snailfish species at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The Atacama snailfish they found are translucent, eellike fish that lack scales and feed on invertebrates in the trench. Their body tissue is almost entirely gelatinous, well adapted for the extreme conditions at such depths.

But since they depend on the high pressure and low temperature to stay in one piece, it is extremely difficult for scientists to bring these fragile fish to the surface without them nearly melting away. Nevertheless, researchers managed to bring a live purple Atacama snailfish safely aboard, giving scientists the opportunity to observe and learn from this new species.

26/11/2021

The Spiny Lobster Musician
If you’re a Disney fan, you’re probably familiar with Sebastian, the lobster who sings “Under the Sea” in The Little Mermaid. Of course, lobsters don’t sing in real life—but some of them do appear to play a violin of sorts. The spiny lobster does not scuttle around with an actual tiny fiddle, but it makes sounds using a mechanism similar to pulling a soft bow across strings. S

piny lobsters have a structure called a “file” located near their eyes. It is similar to the file crickets use to make their chirps. By moving its antennae, the lobster rubs a piece of soft tissue, known as a plectrum, across the file. The friction creates sound. The scientist who discovered this behavior used a tiny microphone and a motion detector attached to the plectrum to gather data to learn how the lobster made its sound.

The sound they produce is not especially melodic. It is more like the screechy whine produced by rubbing a moist finger on a balloon. Lobsters appear to use the sound primarily to startle predators for a brief moment, giving the lobster time to scurry away to safety. Such a strategy can be particularly helpful when spiny lobsters molt. Then, their shell is too soft to protect them. So, even at their most vulnerable, spiny lobsters can use “music” to protect themselves.

26/11/2021

26/11/2021