David Gallo: Underwater astonishments. Bizarre sea slug is half plant, half animal. It looks like any other sea slug, aside from its bright green hue.
But the Elysia chlorotica is far from ordinary: it is both a plant and an animal, according to biologists who have been studying the species for two decades. Not only does E. chlorotica turn sunlight into energy — something only plants can do — it also appears to have swiped this ability from the algae it consumes. Native to the salt marshes of New England and Canada, these sea slugs use contraband chlorophyll-producing genes and cell parts called chloroplasts from algae to carry out photosynthesis, says Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
That genetic material has since been passed down to the next generation, eliminating the need to consume algae for energy. The Borg of the Microbes Takes Up . . . Farming? You are witnessing one of nature's most incredible migrations that never gets shown on the Discovery Channel.
Believe it or not, each one of those little dots is a solitary amoeba. But not for long. Note: This post contains a prize inside! It will await those patient enough to dig to the bottom. : ) Tree of Life Web Project. The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists and nature enthusiasts from around the world.
On more than 10,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history (phylogeny). Each page contains information about a particular group, e.g., salamanders, segmented worms, phlox flowers, tyrannosaurs, euglenids, Heliconius butterflies, club fungi, or the vampire squid. ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things.