Halimeda incrassatais a eccentric of seaweed , and it ’s pretty badass for an algae . It dominates the seagrass ecosystem around the Caribbean , defend itself both chemically and with a hard , calcified covering , and can self - amputate its branch if there ’s something fawn around on them and bothering it . This does n’t do much to deter the sea slugElysia tuca , though , which prefers to flow on these seaweed over all others .
The slug has a few tricks for getting past the seaweed ’s defenses . The problematical outside is no problem ; the slug just thrust it with a modify tooth and then sucks out nutrients . In anew study , researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology prove that the slug also uses one of the seaweed ’s chemical substance defense mechanism against it , and steal another for its own use .
After breaking down and isolating chemicals extract from the seaweed , the researchersfoundthat the slug detects two compounds—4 - hydroxybenzoic loony toons ( 4 - HBA ) and halimedatetraacetate ( HTA)—in the water and follows these to the seaweed . These compounds are part of the locoweed ’s suite of defenses against other herbivore , but the clout is n’t bothered by them and alternatively habituate them to lead them right to their prey . What ’s more , they sequester HTA from the seaweed while feeding and then employ it themselves , becoming unpalatable to angle that would otherwise eat them .
The seaweed can still send out the punch packing with ego - amputation , of row , and in the field , the investigator found thatH. incrassataselectively loses subdivision dwell byElysia .
It ’s a cool set of conduct — using defensive compounds to get across a repast down , sucking nutrient out , and stealing defensive chemicals for yourself — and is previously unknown for marine herbivores . But it does n’t make the idle all that unique . While its hunting , course , and defensive strategies are a novelty in the water , they ’re interchangeable to tricks that plant - eating insects have been using on land for a long metre . The research worker say it ’s a clean object lesson of nautical and mundane animals converging on the same strategies , even after being divide by hundreds of millions of years of organic evolution in very dissimilar habitats .
