The pollination can be mediated by animals, wind or water. The best known transport of pollen is that of the bee, which lor carries on its legs from the stamens (male floral organs) from a flower to the stigmas (female floral organs) from another flowerwhere fertilization then occurs. The wind also favors pollination, but only by 10% compared to animals. Nevertheless, in the ocean this process carried out by animals was unknownuntil now.
Las red algae Gracilaria gracilis They lead a lonely life. Due to their lack of mobility, the male gametes, or spermatia, must navigate to the female plants in order to reproduce. Scientists endorsed the idea of red algae fertilization through ocean currents, but in a study published last Thursday 28 by the renowned magazine Science it was suggested that this reproduction was mediated by small crustaceans of the species Idotea balthica.
A team of scientists belonging to the CNRS, Sorbonne University, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile y Southern University of Chile, from Franco-Chilean investigative unit of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology of the Algae of the Marine Station of Roscoff, starred in the discovery: for the first time it has shown that marine animals are involved in the reproductive cycle of algae.
This breaks the paradigm that the fertilization of algae only occurs when the gametes are transported by currents.
This suggests that “animal-mediated fertilization might have evolved independently in terrestrial and marine environments”, point out the authors of the study. Furthermore, it is possible that pollination is older than believedmay even have arisen in the sea before plants reached the terrestrial environment.
How did they prove it?
To demonstrate this red algae fertilization event, the researchers turned to a series of laboratory experiments with these tiny crustaceans. Habitually both species they find each other in rock pools in the English ChannelEuropa.
It was observed that “at low tidein calm waters, these crustaceans move from seaweed to seaweed and feed on biofilm and other microalgae that develop on its surface”, according to a communiqué from the Catholic University of Chile. To which he adds that “when the tide risesto resist the waves, cling tightly to algae with the sharp hooks of its feet. To simulate this in the laboratory, it was not an easy task.
One important thing they found was that these crustaceans carry the male gametes on legs and abdomen, that is, in all parts of the body that come into contact with the algae. The reproduction processin low tide conditions, usually has greatest successGiven the algae remain submerged in calm waterpointed out the researchers Emma Lavaut and Myriam Valero, lead authors of the study.
All this confirms the importance of caring for the ocean: the different species and the interaction between them must be preserved.
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