Maybe some of you have heard about that awesome sea slug that contains algae chloroplasts and can actually photosynthesize like a plant, right?
Well, it also seems that its ability to utilize chloroplasts was a mutation induced by a virus.
The virus continues to operate in the maintenance of this process.
100% of the species is infected.
……And after they lay their eggs, 100% of them are killed by that virus. Not by “aging” or some other natural life cycle trigger. They just stop being necessary now that they’ve made a new generation and the virus re-activates what were probably its original deadly symptoms when the two first met millions of years ago.
hi what the FUCK
I’ve only read the abstract but
a) this makes it the second animal clade I know of to have a symbiotic relationship with a virus, Ichneumons and their ilk being the first
b) Synchronized mass die-offs, what the hell, why isn’t that selected against AF
“Animal blood comes in a rainbow of hues because of the varying chemistry of the molecules it uses to carry oxygen. Humans use hemoglobin, whose iron content imparts a crimson color to our red blood cells. Octopuses, lobsters, and horseshoe crabs use hemocyanin, which has copper instead of iron, and is blue instead of red—that’s why these creatures bleed blue. Other related molecules are responsible for the violet blood of some marine worms, and the green blood of leeches. But the green-blooded lizards use good old hemoglobin. Their red blood cells are, well, red. Their green has a stranger origin: Biliverdin.
They should be dead. Biliverdin can damage DNA, kill cells, and destroy neurons. And yet, the lizards have the highest levels of biliverdin ever seen in an animal. Their blood contains up to 20 times more of it than the highest concentration ever recorded in a human—an amount that proved to be fatal. And yet, not only are the lizards still alive, they’re not even jaundiced. How do they tolerate the chemical? Why did they evolve such high levels of biliverdin in the first place? And why, as Austin’s colleague Zachary Rodriguez has just discovered, did they do so on several occasions?”
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Plume de Lynx 