An underwater closeup of the Keys Margarita Snail, Cayo margarita (brand-new species) in the coral reef of the Florida Keys. Bieler has actually spent the previous 4 decades studying invertebrate animals living in the Western Atlantic, but these specific snails “are so little and so well-hidden that weve not experienced them before during our scuba diving surveys. He and his colleagues, consisting of fellow Field Museum manager Petra Sierwald, came across the lemon-yellow snails in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and they found a comparable, lime-colored snail in Belize. “Many snails are polychromatic– within the exact same types, you get various colors,” states Bieler. Based on these molecular data, Bieler, Sierwald, and their co-authors Timothy Collins, Rosemary Golding, Camila Granados-Cifuentes, John Healy, and Timothy Rawlings, put the snails in a brand-new genus, Cayo, after the Spanish word for a small, low island.
An underwater closeup of the Keys Margarita Snail, Cayo margarita (brand-new types) in the coral reef of the Florida Keys. Note the two long arms, used by the snail to spread the mucus net for feeding. Credit: R. Bieler
Bieler has actually spent the past four years studying invertebrate animals living in the Western Atlantic, but these specific snails “are so little and so well-hidden that weve not encountered them before during our diving studies. We had to look extremely carefully,” he states. The new types belongs to the very same family of marine snails as the intrusive “Spider-Man” snail that the exact same group explained from the Vandenberg shipwreck off the Florida Keys in 2017..
Discoveries in Color and Genetics.
He and his associates, consisting of fellow Field Museum curator Petra Sierwald, came across the lemon-yellow snails in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and they found a comparable, lime-colored snail in Belize. “Many snails are polychromatic– within the exact same types, you get different colors,” states Bieler. “In a single population, even a single little cluster, one might be orange, one may be gray. I believe they do it to confuse fish and not offer them a clear target, and some have alerting coloration.”.
” Initially, when I saw the lime-green one and the lemon-yellow one, I figured they were the very same types,” says Bieler. “But when we sequenced their DNA, they were very various.”.
Look carefully: a Margarita Snail in the middle of a dead area of a large brain coral. Credit: R. Bieler.
Based on these molecular data, Bieler, Sierwald, and their co-authors Timothy Collins, Rosemary Golding, Camila Granados-Cifuentes, John Healy, and Timothy Rawlings, positioned the snails in a brand-new genus, Cayo, after the Spanish word for a little, low island. The yellow snail was called Cayo margarita after the citrusy beverages in Jimmy Buffets “Margaritaville.” The lime snails name, Cayo galbinus, suggests “greenish-yellow.”.
Similar Traits and Biodiversity Importance.
While only distantly associated, these snails all have actually brightly colored heads poking out of their tubular shells. “Our thought is this is a caution color,” says Bieler. That also might help explain why theyre able to have exposed heads– on the reef, everybody is out to eat you, and if you do not have any defensive system, you will be overgrown by the corals and sea polyps and all the things around you.
Bieler says that the study is very important due to the fact that it assists illuminate the biodiversity of coral reefs, which are under serious threat due to environment modification. “There have actually been boosts in worldwide water temperature levels, and some species can manage them better than others,” says Bieler. The Cayo snails have a propensity to reside on pieces of dead coral, and as more coral is exterminated, the snails may spread out..
Says Bieler, “its another sign that right under our noses, we have undescribed species. This is in snorkeling depth in a greatly touristed location, and were still finding brand-new things all around us.”.
Referral: “Replacing mechanical defense with colorful faces– twice: parallel evolution of the non-operculate marine worm-snail genera Thylacodes (Guettard, 1770) and Cayo n. gen. (Gastropoda: Vermetidae)” by Rüdiger Bieler, Timothy M. Collins, Rosemary Golding, Camila Granados-Cifuentes, John M. Healy, Timothy A. Rawlings and Petra Sierwald, 9 October 2023, PeerJ.DOI: 10.7717/ peerj.15854.
This research study was added to by researchers at the Field Museum, Florida International University, Queensland Museum, and Cape Breton University..
An underwater closeup of the lime-colored Margarita Snail of the Belizean reef, Cayo galbinus (new species). The two black dots are the eyes. Credit: R. Bieler
The marine snails intense citrus coloring may assist ward off predators.
This string of tropical islands is home to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US, along with many animals discovered no place else in the world. One of them is a newly-discovered, bright yellow snail, named in honor of Margaritaville.
A Closer Look at Worm Snails
These marine snails are remote relatives of the land-dwelling gastropods you might discover leaving slimy tracks in your garden. Nicknamed “worm snails,” they spend the majority of their lives in one location.
” I find them particularly cool because they belong to routine free-living snails, however when the juveniles discover an appropriate area to live, they hunker down, cement their shell to the substrate, and never ever move once again,” states Rüdiger Bieler, curator of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago and the studys lead author. “Their shell continues to grow as an irregular tube around the snails body, and the animal hunts by setting out a mucus web to trap plankton and little bits of sediment.”