“Monterey Bay is the best studied patch of deep ocean in the world,” said Bruce Robison, senior scientist at MBARI. “And yet we’re still finding new stuff. Think what else is out there in the…
This undated photo provided by Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute, shows a mystery mollusc observed by MBARI’s remotely operated vehicle Tiburon in the outer Monterey Canyon at a depth of approximately 1,550 meters. announced their discovery of these ghostly creatures as the first member of a brand-new family of nudibranchs that floats through the water column instead of crawling along the seafloor.
And these individuals baffled scientists from the beginning. “It’s not very similar to anything else,” said Bruce Robison, senior scientist at MBARI. “When we first came upon it, we were all saying to each other, ‘What the heck is that?’ because we’ve never seen anything like it before.” The mystery mollusc differs from its distant cousins in both genetics and anatomy. When comparing the genes that are similar between species, scientists can track small differences in a sequence to see how closely related two species are. The fewer differences, the closer they are related. While the mystery mollusc genes are most similar to nudibranchs, they differ significantly from those of their nearest cousins.
Another possibility comes from the fact that the finger-like projections, called dactyls, also glow in the dark. “Those dactyls fall off like a lizard dropping its tail,” said Robison. “If they turn off the lights in the rest of the body, and just that glowing, wiggling dactyl is visible, then the predator may go for the decoy rather than the animal itself.”
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