I’ve just discovered that my birthday, October 29, is also National Sea Slug Day, so I thought I’d look into these creatures about which I know nothing, alerted by a news release.
A new 74-page paper in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society offers numerous photos, sketches, and electron micrographs of the animals, a type of marine invertebrate also known as a nudibranch (“naked gills”).
In the past, invertebrate zoologists have sorted out the 3,000 or so species of sea slugs by color patterns; whether the gills are elevated, vibrating, or neither; and the shapes of the jaw and the radula, a tongue-like structure with tiny teeth. The new paper adds DNA sequencing to the list of classifying criteria, which added 17 new species to the known 57 or so. All 17 are members of the vibrantly-colored genus Hypselodoris.
To continue reading go to my blog DNA Science at Public Library of Science, where this post first appeared.
A new 74-page paper in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society offers numerous photos, sketches, and electron micrographs of the animals, a type of marine invertebrate also known as a nudibranch (“naked gills”).
In the past, invertebrate zoologists have sorted out the 3,000 or so species of sea slugs by color patterns; whether the gills are elevated, vibrating, or neither; and the shapes of the jaw and the radula, a tongue-like structure with tiny teeth. The new paper adds DNA sequencing to the list of classifying criteria, which added 17 new species to the known 57 or so. All 17 are members of the vibrantly-colored genus Hypselodoris.
To continue reading go to my blog DNA Science at Public Library of Science, where this post first appeared.