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‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature identified as digenean trematode
- fsckboy 3y agoevolutionary precursors, literal wingmen, working selflessly in favor of better chances for reproductive success.
- knoke 3y agoThe author mentioned it in the text, but Carl Zimmer‘s Parasitus Rex is is a good, horrifying read.
- lloeki 3y agoThis instantly reminded me of Halo's Mgalekgolo a.k.a hunters, which are actually an unintelligent worm-like life form (Lekgolo) that aggregate as a collective (a colony) into an extremely resilient, strengthful, nimble, and smart humanoid body. https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Mgalekgolo https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Mgalekgolo
- checkyoursudo 3y agoI think it looks fine? Kinda cute.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>One of those intrigued was Igor Adameyko, a developmental neurobiologist at the Medical University of Vienna. (A fellow enthusiast of marine biology, he spotted the pictures on Instagram, where he has his own account dedicated to marine zooplankton.) A definite scientist advanced in marine biology, just employed in a different laboratory profession so technically not an "actual marine biology professional". >in his lab, Adameyko would like to learn more >“These are our night science projects, because we want to have fun in the lab,” he says. “The idea is that there are no limits. And if you want to do something cool, you can.” Careful, having an attitude like that can impart an unfair advantage so strong that it can draw some blowback from many so-called "serious professional" environments.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThat's pretty cool. It's like a teeny, suicidal, Portuguese Man O' War. The "Kin Selection" thing is fairly common in insects. Most workers and soldiers in hives are sterile females (so when those white-faced hornets swarm your ass, it's "Hell hath no fury" in action).
- msla 3y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoGlad you stay busy. Guess we’re all better off, then. Have a great day!
- iancmceachern 3y agoThis thing is terrifying. It's like a Trojan Horse (the weapon of war) and. Trojan Horse (the malware) both in one
- hermitcrab 3y agoIt looks positively cuddly compared to a Bobbit Worm (find a video on Youtube, if you dare).
- thih9 3y agoBobbit Worm is cute compared to a ribbon worm and its lightning tongue / proboscis (find a video if you don’t care about sleeping today).
- hermitcrab 3y agoI wouldn't want to find a ribbon worm in my salad, but I don't find them anything like as horror-inducing as a Bobbit worm.
- taneq 3y agoI still can’t believe they actually called it that.
- thih9 3y agoThere is a bird called “Little bustard” [1] and more [2]. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_bustard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_bustard [2]: https://www.boredpanda.com/bird-species-silly-names/ https://www.boredpanda.com/bird-species-silly-names/
- denton-scratch 3y ago"Bustard" is apparently from Latin avis tarda, meaning "slow or deliberate bird".
- 3y ago
- dools 3y agoIt's like a floating Rat King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king
- pvaldes 3y agowha-a-a-a-at? For the first time in a lot of time, they used the term mind-boggling accurately. I had never ever seen something like this before in a digenean.
- pvaldes 3y agoWhat worries me is that all is based in a sample of DnA corrupted Digeneans by definition aren't segmented animals. If each "petal" of the flower is an animal, then those are clearly segmented and this is very problematic So either this is not a digenean, or we would need to reclassify an entire class of animals. If this does not have complex chetae and maybe remains of a mandible then is not a polychaete (but we need to take in mind that both could had been dissolved by the preservative). This animals seem to have a species of terminal sucker like digeneans have. But I would thing instead in another kind of animals with suckers that are segmented: Several marine leeches feeding on a mass of digenean spores (each one would be filled with digenean undigested DnA, so beware with spreading the analysis too thin!. Other reasonable possibility IMAO would be a group of leeches producing or incubating a mass of eggs. Leech coccoons are complex structurally and round. Something is very wrong here
- twic 3y agoParasites are always the weirdest. Parasitic crustaceans: https://bogleech.com/bio-paracrust https://bogleech.com/bio-paracrust Parasitic jellyfish: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/when-jellyfish-became-parasites-strange-things-happened/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/when-jell... Another parasitic jellyfish (its larva develops inside-out, then turns itself outside-in when it bursts out of its host!): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypodium_hydriforme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypodium_hydriforme
- lethologica 3y agoWhoa, Argulus looks like Corroder from the PS1 game Clock Tower. Utterly terrifying.
- calf 3y agoOnce at a fancy Japanese restaurant in NYC, I found a pea-sized crab inside a cooked mussel, and showed it to the staff. They didn't know what it was! I don't recall exactly, but either I was brave/stupid, or checked my Sony Xperia smartphone that it was a pea crab and was safe to eat. So I ate it and it tasted like crab sauce.
- RadiozRadioz 3y agoI can always rely on my Sony Xperia smartphone to get me through the day. Whether I'm at home, on the go... or even in the pool! With Sony's water resistance technology and a high resolution camera to capture those special moments, Xperia has my back.
- m463 3y agoMan: "I'm a marketing manager who lives in the suburbs and commutes to work on the highway. I live alone, so of course I needed a car that can seat 12 and is equipped to drive across arctic tundra... it just makes me feel better!" Woman: "The new Maibatsu Monstrosity... mine's bigger!"
- calf 3y ago
- ethbr1 3y ago>> Some flukes have evolved a behavior in which the larvae join into shapes that mimic small organisms. In doing so, they entice a fish to eat the larvae, so they can continue their life cycle inside the host. >> These passengers, it seems, act as the infectious agents, waiting to infiltrate the gills or intestines of a fish that swallows them. The sailors, meanwhile, do the hard work of moving the blob through the water—but in [sic, doing so] sacrifice their own opportunities to reproduce. That's fascinating! Dr. Ian Malcolm, your quote forever echoes.
- lannisterstark 3y agoTotal war Warhammer vibes. What was the faction name that did it?
- ethbr1 3y agoGenestealer?
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago> This phenomenon, in which one member of a species forgoes its own chance to reproduce so that another can, is called kin selection. So why don’t the one species die out? When do they reproduce?
- reubenmorais 3y agoOne /member/ forgoes reproduction, not one /species/. It's akin to a sibling deciding that they won't have kids so they can help their sibling raise their own. The sacrificing family member passes their DNA on because they share DNA with kin.
- mac-chaffee 3y agoKin selection takes place within a single species: > The DNA confirmed that both the sailors and tiny passengers inside the hemisphere belong to the same species.
- wiml 3y agoIt's not that different from a multicellular organism. The vast majority of cells in your body are dead-end lineages. They've specialized into sterile forms so that a few cells in your gonads actually do have a chance to reproduce. Evolutionarily it works because all the cells have the same (or very similar, in the case of kin selection) genes.