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Methane, which traps heat, may be best known for its danger of posing in the human and earth’s atmosphere, but at the dark depths of the ocean, greenhouse gases are a nutritious diet for some of the world’s most mystical creatures, new research suggests.
Scientists say they discovered three previously unknown ocean spider species off the west coast of the US. I studied Marine habitat known as methane penetrates thousands of feet below sea level.
In this symbiotic relationship, bacteria take real estate in the spider exoskeleton, and in return, microorganisms convert carbon-rich methane and oxygen into sugar and fat.
“Like eggs for breakfast, sea spiders stir the surface of their bodies and tweet all those bacteria for nutrition,” said Shana Goffredy, professor of biology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and lead researcher. This unique nutritional strategy has never been observed in ocean spiders before, she said.
Other species of sea spiders share common with their terrestrial cousins, using large tube-like tusks to capture, secure and suck liquids from soft-body prey. However, laboratory observations of newly discovered species, part of the genus Sericosura, reveal that there is a lack of appendages needed to capture prey, resembling farmers where farmers harvest methane-fueled bacteria from their bodies.
According to Goffredi, spiders and their hitchhiking microbes could play an important role in preventing natural gas that prevents global warming, which is a natural gas that is thought to exacerbate global warming.
“The deep seas feel really far away, but all living things are interconnected. Despite their small size, these animals have a huge impact on their environment,” Goffredi said. “If you don’t really understand the ocean, you can’t expect to (usage) the ocean sustainably.”
Light from the sun does not reach the newly described deep-sea ecosystem that makes homes by the newly described Celicosla spider species.
To survive in this dark environment, microbes have evolved to use chemicals instead of sunlight for energy, explained Nicole Dubilier, professor and director of the Department of Symbiotic Sciences at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany. Dubilier was not involved in this study.
After the marine life dies, it sinks to the seabed and buried, Dubilier said. During the decomposition process, methane gas is released, relieving cracks in the sediment like bubbles. Instead of floating on the whims of the water column, methane-eating microbes attach themselves to sea animals to remain in the bubbles.
By analyzing the isotopes of spider tissue, scientists determined that not only did the bacteria unite the ride from their eight-legged friends, they were also being eaten.
“This is truly the beauty of symbiosis between the two. Bacteria get the perfect Goldilockszone with everything they need,” Dubilier said. “Even if 80% of the population is eaten (by spiders), it’s worth it for 20% to survive and continue to breed.”
These Celicosura species are the first sea spiders to eat methane-fueled microorganisms, but other deep-sea animals, such as tube worms and sponges, are known to share rare diets, Dubilier pointed out.
Deep-sea ecosystems are likely to play such an important role in keeping methane away from the Earth’s atmosphere, and one day they said that the same type of microorganism found in the Salmonella spider could be cultured to reduce water contaminants elsewhere.
The newly discovered Celikoslat spider is translucent and only about 0.4 inches (1 cm) long, so it is likely that it cannot move too far. In fact, each of the three sea spider species collected for the study came from various regions off the coast of Southern California and Alaska.
Spiders are so small that many of their organs are found in their appendages. To mating, female spiders shoot hundreds of eggs from their kneecaps. Male spiders gather in sacrament-like bundles that loop around their feet like bracelets, research found.
After the eggs were hatched, Goffredy’s team noticed that bacteria living in his father’s spider were attached to hatching, providing an early food source.
Studying the inheritance of animal microbiota could help scientists, for example, understand more about how human gut bacteria are passed between mothers and newborn children, Dubilier said.
Further investigations of the seabed could also discover more similar, similar seawater species, Goffredy said.
“People tend to think of the deep sea as a kind of uniform ecosystem, but that’s not true. There is a lot of biodiversity in each region, and the animals are very localized to certain habitats on the seabed,” Goffredy said. “If you decide to use the seabed for mining, for example, you need to be very careful.
