Recording by David Murphy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, via NPR.
We know from previous posts how important plankton is to the health of the world’s oceans, and now we’re learning about a species of zooplankton that is an example of convergent evolution in the form of “flight” motion. The gif to the left displays the watery “wingbeats” of the near-microscopic sea snail Limacina helicina, which is the same type of movement that a fruit fly’s wings make to move through the air. Merrit Kennedy reports for NPR:
It’s “a remarkable example of convergent evolution,” the researchers write. They say the ancestors of zooplankton (such as L. helicina) and those of flying insects diverged some 550 million years ago.
This sea snail’s movements are more like a fruit fly’s than other zooplankton, the study found.
L. helicina, which lives in cold Pacific waters, has two smooth swimming appendages “that flap in a complex three-dimensional stroke pattern resembling the wingbeat kinematics of flying insects.”
Other types of zooplankton typically “paddle through the water with drag-based propulsion” rather than fly, the researchers say.
Study co-author David Murphy tells the Journal of Experimental Biology that the sea snail and fruit fly both “clap their wings together at the top of a wing beat before peeling them apart, sucking fluid into the V-shaped gap between the wings to create low-pressure vortices at the wing tips that generate lift.”
Organikos 