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'Mind-Blowing' New Creature Discovered

By Charles Q. Choi,
LiveScience
Posted: 2008-05-20 13:01:06
Filed Under: Science News
LiveScience.com


(May 20) - Among the greatest mysteries in zoology for more than a century have been vaguely shrimp-like creatures known as y-larvae.

Although these microscopic beasts are clearly young crustaceans, no one knew what the adult forms looked like.

Photo Gallery

Hoeg et al, BMC Biology

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For years, scientists wondered what the shrimp-like creatures known as y-larvae, above, looked like when they matured. Now, researchers have solved the mystery by dosing the animals with a growth hormone. The result? Wriggling, limbless creatures now dubbed "ypsigons." Click through the rest of the gallery to see new and rare species of animals.

Now researchers may have solved this puzzle by dosing the y-larvae with a hormone that forced them to go through a growth spurt.

The result — simple, pulsing, slug-like masses of cells that were "mind-blowing" to the scientists. These surprisingly simple creatures — far simpler than their larval stage — may be parasites found worldwide.

Dizzying diversity

Y-larvae, or facetotectans, were first discovered in 1899. There were once x-larvae as well, the 'x' and 'y' both denoting something mysterious. Later on, the adult form of the x-larvae were found, but bafflingly, even after intense searches, no one knew what y-larvae grew up to be, so they kept their name.

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These critters are just a few hundred microns large, or roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. They occur with dizzying diversity in coral reef areas, and are found in all oceans, from the poles to the tropics. Their commonplace nature suggests the adults play a major role in ecosystems around the globe.

To find out what these y-adults might be, an international team of scientists used nets to collect more than 40 species of y-larvae from a marine station at Sesoko Island near Okinawa, Japan. As they were gathering the creatures, a cyclone approached.

"It was predicted to hit the marine station five days after the arrival of our team," said researcher Henrik Glenner, a molecular biologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "This put us under substantial time pressure, because we knew that it was impossible to catch the y-larvae after the cyclone had passed. Therefore, we had to work during the nights."

Safe back in the lab

The researchers next exposed y-larvae to a crustacean hormone that encouraged them to mature. The creatures metamorphosized into a juvenile form, dubbed "ypsigons," unexpectedly shedding their exoskeletons to become wriggling, eyeless, limbless creatures that resemble parasitic crustaceans.

At first the researchers thought their eyes were tricking them, but eventually "the juvenile literally crawled out of the old larval carapace," Glenner recalled. "It was only after several repeated experiments we actually believed what we saw. That feeling was a mind-blowing experience."

The fact that ypsigons are vastly different and far simpler than y-larvae might help explain why the adult versions of these creatures have escaped detection for so long. These are so simple compared with y-larvae that they even lack digestive tracts and nervous systems.

Ypsigons could make do without a digestive tract by directly absorbing nutrients from their surroundings, They might develop a nervous system later on in life, "but not necessarily," Glenner said.

"I know it sounds strange, but in some adult parasitic barnacles — rhizocephalans, which parasitize other crustaceans — there are no traces of a nervous system either," Glenner told LiveScience. "This is possible because their behavior as adults is restricted to certain coordinated movements when they release their larvae."

Probably parasites

As the final adult stage of the y-larvae are probably parasites, future efforts to uncover these y-adults — to solve this mystery once and for all — will aim to identify their hosts by screening coral reef animals for y-larvae DNA.

"These parasites could play a very important role in the wild," said researcher Jens Høeg, a marine zoologist and invertebrate morphologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "They should not be seen as evil or bad. Wherever these parasites are, be they in sea urchins or sea stars or corals, they are probably important in making up what we consider a normal, healthy coral reef."

Høeg, Glenner and their colleagues Mark Grygier and Yoshihisa Fujita detailed their findings May 19 in the journal BMC Biology. They were supported by the Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark and the Lake Biwa Museum in Japan.

Photo Gallery

Kyodo News / AP

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This cat earned a promotion to the rank of "super station master" for boosting a struggling Japanese railroad's business. Seen here on duty at Kishi Station in Kinokawa on May 16, Tama sits by the entrance wearing her black cap and poses for photos with tourists. Click through the gallery for more animals in the news.

(c) 1999-2007 Imaginova Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

2008-05-20 11:51:48
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Recent Comments

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177 comments

dogsman5 09:42:40 PM May 21 2008

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Who cares?

mysaaed 08:57:24 PM May 21 2008

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I wounder if Yosuke can solve mathematical problems.

jgocc1 12:41:39 PM May 21 2008

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I bet those lil suckers taste great with some cocktail sauce

jimb80 11:25:21 AM May 21 2008

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What a pity that the human race has doomed the rest of the world to extinction.
I give us 50 years

stargazer33154 11:14:07 AM May 21 2008

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chella how do you know the weren't there?

jffrysmit 10:38:57 AM May 21 2008

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punchypete -- ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ............ WHO CARES !!

You came all the way over to this article..... actually had to search for it, then click on the link, read it, then post something?

I'd say you cared. Maybe cared less, but cared enough none the less.

punchypete 10:28:18 AM May 21 2008

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ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ............ WHO CARES !!

chella80 08:17:05 AM May 21 2008

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I've got a question, when Noah built his "arc" how come the ypsigons were not on board?

timwatts99 08:09:42 AM May 21 2008

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jungle1700 wrote
The only "mindblowing" animals I have ever encountered were some toads in Oregon. If you licked them you could talk to several foreign Gods for a few hours.
Maybe thats what the liberals have been doing when they selected Hillary and Obama for their presidential candidates. Can't be any sane reason.

If that's the case the the morons who elected Bush must have been eating those toads raw for a couple of decades before the election. Probably still are.

timwatts99 08:05:43 AM May 21 2008

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fffffffear wrote:
Ummm....some scientist look at those and are blown away?I really dont know what to say............Its so pitiful and sad that someone has such a meaningless life that this blows them away.....I cant imagine being that boring

What is pitiful,and sad is that anyone could be a stupid as you and be alowed access to a computer. A sense of wonder at the natural world and a desire to comprehend it has created every single benefit that science has brought humanity. It is only because of scientists' curiosity about the natural world that morons like you have computers to write your nonsense on.

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