A interesting slug

[RescuePenguin]

Here is an article about an interesting slug. That has got the nickname "Solar Powered Slug". Sometimes I wish I could lay in the sun to get some energy.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/S...460/story.html

The people who live in the Vancouver area may have read this article.

Steve

[Palinurus]

Hi

It´s quite interesting. I never heard of this slug. But to lean, use or steal the skills of plants is quite common under marine beings. A lot of corals and sea anemones live in symbiosis together with algae. Thus they don´t need food and provide the algae with CO2 and the final products of their own digestion. Even the giant clams live together with algae, but they don´t eat them. This slug sucks the chlorophyllic plasmies out of the Vaucheria algae. It´s parasitism.
The planaria can eat hydras without releasing the stinging cells (cnidoblasts or cnidocytes). It digests the hydra, but the cnidoblasts get integrated in the surface of the planaria as a defence against enemies (cleptocnides =stolen stinging cells)

Cheers
Wolfgang

[sorab]

Yes Steve this is very interesting. The transfer of genes and then to become solar powered is quite strange for a complex animal. Thanks for the link!
Cheers
Peter

[Palinurus]

Hi Peter, hi Steve

As far as I red, not the genes but only the chloroplasts are transfered. Each next generation of young slugs has to suck out for another time the sap of that algae with chlorophyllic plastids. The miracle is, that they wander undigested from the gut into the periphery, continuing there photosynthesis. They get water and CO2 from the slug and produce carbonhydrates as long as they get light.

Cheers
Wolfgang