Elysia chlorotica

Elysia chlorotica

Elysia chlorotica is a living marine snail species from the order of the opisthobranch ( Opisthobranchia ).

Description

Elysia chlorotica has a leaf-shaped, slightly translucent body with a pair of head tentacles, is lined with emerald green color and yellow gold. The snail is a hermaphrodite. The screw reaches a length of up to 3 cm - but often stays significantly smaller. The body is green - the color can vary from light green to dark green to dark brown green or black green and has bright spots of green, blue or red paint on - the surface seems to have a velvety texture.

Dissemination

Elysia chlorotica occurs at the North American Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Florida in shallow brackish water.

Way of life

Elysia chlorotica begins her life as a larva that lives freely floating in the open water zone first. During metamorphosis, the worm search the threads of yellow-green marine alga Vaucheria litorea or Vaucheria compacta, settle it and terminate the metamorphosis. The young snails rasp on the walls of the algal cells and suck the cell empty. In the digestive tract of Elysia chlorotica chloroplasts are filtered out of the contents of the algal cells and get into specialized cells that line the digestive tract. From the digestive tract then grow numerous tiny tubes into the body until they reach the skin surface, where they form a special chloroplast -containing layer. Then, the worm is back her mouth and lives from then on exclusively of nutrients that of the chloroplasts ( Kleptoplastiden ) were produced. Viruses should help parts of the genome of the algae in the worm genome to integrate.

Swell

• Frank Ryan: Virolution. The power of viruses in evolution. Page 1-4, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8274-2541-6
• . Rumpho et al, 2011: " The Making of a photosynthetical animal"; The Journal of Experimental Biology 214, 303-311; page 305