Thorny and star -shaped creatures show that the deep sea is a “connected superhighway”
The deep fragile stars are still in motion. This is what a new study seems to suggest, in any case, after having analyzed thousands of specimens of fragile stars and noted that thorny star creatures are much more closely linked to the deep sea than in depths.
The study, which was published in Natureturned to the DNA of fragile stars to capture a clearer image of their movement and their connectivity worldwide. The results reveal that deep fragile stars have spread through the world’s oceans over the 100 million years, connecting regions as distant as Tasmania and Iceland.
“You could consider deep waters as distant and isolated,” said Tim O’Hara, study author and curator of marine invertebrates at the Museums Victoria Research Institute, in a press release. “But for many animals on the seabed, it is actually a connected superhigne.”
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Migration of species on the high seas
Fragile stars, or Ophuroidare ancient animals with small bodies and cracked arms, sometimes thorny. About 480 million years old, they appear at almost all the depths of the ocean, from lowlands to depths, including 11,500 feet below the surface of the water.
But how are these fragile stars and how does their depth affect their movement over time? To find out, the researchers analyzed DNA from 2,699 specimens of fragile stars. Taken from different depths, the specimens were collected on 332 research trips and acquired in 48 museums of natural history, making the study the most complete evaluation of fragile star DNA to date.
The analysis of the researchers has shown that the fragile stars that were collected in the deep sea shared more DNA between the regions than the fragile stars that were collected in the shallows. In fact, the fragile stars from Australia were surprisingly similar to the fragile stars of the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting that creatures have spread to whole oceans over millions and millions of years.
“On long time scales, species on the high seas have widened their ranges,” O’Hara said in the press release. “These animals do not have fins or wings, but they still managed to spread over whole oceans.”
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Make movements without fins or wings
According to the researchers, the trick of these massive migrations is in the larval stage of the fragile star. Indeed, in the coldest depths, the larvae of baby’s fragile stars survive for long periods, but in the warmer depths, their lifespan is much shorter.
“The secret lies in their biology,” O’Hara said in the press release. “Their larvae can survive for a long time in cold water, reaching a walk on slow high seas.”
The mobility of deep fragile stars is also stimulated by the conditions of their environment. While a single species of fragile star can survive in a certain number of regions on the high seas, which are relatively stable and similar in temperature in the world, an individual fragile star could have trouble living in many shallow sea areas, which differ considerably in terms of temperature, fresh water from the Arctic Ocean to temperate waves of the Pacific and the Atlantic.
Of course, the deep sea is not completely consistent. Although it is much more stable, the depths always have temperature fluctuations and other conditions, and can always suffer from an environmental change and extinction, creating certain areas where the brittle stars thrive and certain areas where fragile stars suffer.
“It is a paradox. The deep sea is very connected, but also incredibly fragile,” added O’hara in the press release. “It is essential to understand how life is distributed and moves in this vast environment if we want to protect it, in particular as threats to mining and in -depth climate change.”
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Sources of articles
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Sam Walters is a journalist covering archeology, paleontology, ecology and the evolution of Discover, as well as an assortment of other subjects. Before joining the Discover team as a deputy editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
