ecosystem importance: in the sea pollination (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 28, 2022, 21:01 (637 days ago) @ David Turell

A little critter crustacean pollinates seaweed:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2331419-small-woodlouse-like-crustacean-pollinates...

"A small woodlouse-like crustacean seems to help fertilise red seaweed in rock pools, much as a bee pollinates flowers. This suggest that such behaviour is more common in the oceans than we thought, and animal-mediated pollination may even have first evolved there.

We tend to associate pollination with insects like bees and flowering plants on land, but crustaceans have been found to pollinate seagrass underwater. Now Myriam Valero at the Sorbonne University’s Roscoff Biological Station in France and her colleagues have shown that a very similar thing happens with the red seaweed Gracilaria gracilis, which is actually a type of algae.

"During the seaweed’s life cycle, you can have individuals that are either male or female. It was already known that water currents can carry spermatia – the seaweed’s version of sperm – from male individuals to reproductive organs on nearby female seaweed. Each fertilisation event generates a bulb-shaped structure that is visible to the naked eye, called a cystocarp, on the female seaweed.

***

"By counting the number of cystocarps on female seaweed, the team discovered that there were 20 times more fertilisation events in the presence of the little crustaceans than there were in its absence. This suggests that the crustaceans pollinated the seaweed.

"The team then imaged the crustaceans that interacted with the seaweed and found spermatia attached to the abdomen and legs of the animals, showing that the animals could carry it around when they travel from male to female seaweed."

Comment: another example of an important part of an ecosystem. Just like bees on land.