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A newfound metal money of colorful marine escargot slings nets of mucus like superhero web slinger Spider - Man and is " kind of precious , " according to the scientist who regain and depict it .
The flyspeck sea creature belongs to a mathematical group known as worm snail — soft - corporate mollusks incase in tubular shells with an opening at one end . Their hatchling crawl freely , but they presently attach their shells permanently to knockout substrates — like corals or rocks — and are entirely stationary as adults .
Thylacodes vandyensis, a new species of worm snail, is plentiful on an artificial reef in Florida waters.
Researchers find the new coinage attached to a wreck that had been designated as an artificial coral Witwatersrand in the Florida Keys . Though the worm snails were fixed firm in place , they probably uprise far away and are not aboriginal to that part of the Atlantic Ocean , scientist indite in a newfangled study . [ Alien Invaders : Destructive Invasive Species ]
The new described snail , Thylacodes vandyensis(thy - la - KOH'-dees van - dee - EN'-sis ) , was list after the ship where it was regain : the USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg , aka " Vandy . " A former World War II naval transport vessel , " Vandy " rests on the ocean bottom of theFlorida Keys National Marine Sanctuary . The ship , which measures 522 feet ( 159 meters ) long , was deliberately scuttle on May 27 , 2009 , to become the earth ’s second - cock-a-hoop unreal coral Rand , CNNreportedthat day .
Slime nets: useful and delicious
T. vandyensissnails motley in size , but on medium , they are " about the length of a finger , " according to take lead writer Rüdiger Bieler , a conservator of zoology at The Field Museum in Chicago . Their shell measure up to 1 in ( 25 mm ) long and are tipped at one end by a narrow initiative of about 0.2 inches ( 5.5 mm ) in diameter , Bieler and his workfellow wrote in the bailiwick .
The snails are colorful creatures , with bright - orange tree faces that are seeable through the openings in their eggshell , Bieler pronounce . And they run around four outgrowth on their insect - corresponding bodies , two of which are connected toslime glandssimilar to those used by garden snails to bring forth viscid lead .
ButT. vandyensisuses its slime in a different manner : It swan mucous strands in Spidey - style profits to trapplanktonand other constituent textile . Afterward , it hauls in its loot , eats the gooey net along with whatever food it was able to catch , and recycles the ooze to produce a new snare , Bieler told Live Science .
The worm snailT. vandyensisuses a mucous net to trap its plankton prey.
There may even be chemical agents in the nets that protect the snails from predators . Another radical of scientists ferment with louse snails in the Red Sea find evidence of bioactive metabolite — compounds affecting aliveness tissues — in theirslime nets , which could explain why predatory fish keep their distance from the worm snails in Florida , Bieler allege .
" If one of the snail ' tubes is damaged , the fish will eat them , " he said . " But as long as there ’s a mucose net , they stay away — ostensibly , the mucose net income also seems to be a mean to deter the Pisces the Fishes . "
Opportunistic invaders
scientist first spotted three of the snail on the shipwreck in 2012 . Though Bieler had work with this family of snails since the 1990s , he had never seen it in the western Atlantic before , and the research squad suspected that it might be a new species , Bieler tell .
When the researchers rejoin to the wreck less than two year afterward , the snails numbered in the tens of yard , Bieler said . Based on their knowledge of worm snail , specimens frommuseum collectionsdocumenting local mintage , and DNA analysis , the researcher determined that the dirt ball escargot belonged to an undescribed species . Genetic evidence corroborate that the species ' secretive relatives were all from the Pacific Ocean , suggest that the animal was not native to the area , the field authors wrote .
In fact , invaders from the Pacific , including a large oyster specie , had already been identify on the shipwreck , Bieler noted .
" Other species have taken the same nerve tract , " he say . " That made it even more likely that this Modern one may have fall from the Pacific . "
The newfangled escargot is not likely to be the last invader to square up on this artificial reef , Bieler said . Any recently sink vas in which a reef ecosystem is still forming and where predators have yet to claim their territory offers the gross opportunity fora wandering speciesto nail down in — " even a fairly wimpish one , " he told Live Science .
" I would wish to do a monitoring political platform along the coastline to involve divers and dive broadcast , " Bieler said . " There are so many citizenry out there take photograph — we can alert each other about novel arrivals and unusual things that are popping up . "
The findings were published today ( April 5 ) in the journal PeerJ.
Original article onLive scientific discipline .
