LOADED despite its airy looks, this
nemertean is built to hunt. a tonguelike
projection coils around a dart within the
ribbon worm, ready to shoot out at prey. a
see-through body reveals a yellow, branching stomach. collected on an antarctic
research expedition, this Pelagonemertes
rollestoni specimen measures about
3 centimeters long. census analyses compared species living in the antarctic and
arctic. although many of the finds were a
world apart, more than 200 kinds of antarctic organisms had look-alikes at the other
pole, either the same species or a close
relative. Russ hopcRoft/univ. of aLasKa faiRBanKs
DEEP FREEZE With new data, scientists
have found that antarctica, where the juvenile octopus shown here resides, periodically enriches the cast of animal characters
in seas to the north. as the continent’s glaciers have expanded and retreated through
time, some octopus lineages have taken
refuge in deep antarctic waters. from there
the octopuses adventure into northern
oceans, giving rise to new species there.
sea spiders and isopods, among other
groups, may also have edged northward in
time with these glacial cycles. M. RauscheRt
SMALL POINTS Microbial residents of
the seas called acantharians (one shown
here) form skeletons of strontium sulfate,
which dissolve when the cell dies. census
researchers took advantage of advances in
dna sequencing to explore the diversity of
marine microbes, analyzing water samples
from 1,200 sites worldwide. all this little
stuff adds up to a majority of the biomass
of the oceans, researchers report. Wafting
cells could collectively weigh as much as
240 billion african elephants. that’s
35 elephants’ worth of microbes for every
person living on the planet.
Linda aMaRaL ZettLeR, undeR License to MBL (MicRo*scope)
