{"id":26053,"date":"2019-05-20T15:25:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T20:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=26053"},"modified":"2019-05-20T15:25:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T20:25:52","slug":"parents-unknown-mysterious-larvae-found-panamas-two-oceans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/parents-unknown-mysterious-larvae-found-panamas-two-oceans\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents unknown\u2014Mysterious larvae found in Panama’s two oceans"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Under the microscope, sea water reveals the larval stages of little-known marine creatures called phoronids (horseshoe worms), but finding their parents is another story. Although such fanciful larvae caught the eye of scientists studying plankton\u2014the tiny, drifting plants and animals in the world’s oceans\u2014as long ago as the 1800s, there are only about 15 species of phoronids known worldwide, based on adult specimens. A study of phoronid larvae published this week by scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama has detected eight potentially new species.<\/p>\n

“The global diversity of small, rare marine animals like phoronids is grossly underestimated,” said STRI staff-scientist Rachel Collin. “We don’t know what animals are out there, and we know even less about what their role might be in the world’s oceans.”<\/p>\n

Because phoronid larvae<\/a> swim and drift in seawater, they are much easier to sample than their adult forms, which live on the sea floor within sands, sediment or rubble. And the larvae do not look like the adults, making it difficult to tell which larva belongs to which adult without doing a sort of paternity testing: comparing larval DNA sequences to the DNA of their potential parents.<\/p>\n

Named for the Egyptian goddess Phoronis, tubular adult horseshoe worms anchor their bodies to rocks or corals and wave a crown of ciliated tentacles to capture tiny food particles. To reproduce, their eggs and sperm unite to create embryos that hatch as swimming larvae, which then become members of the microscopic plankton.The larvae have cylindrical bodies topped with a ring of tentacles and a large hood that serves to capture food. Many are decorated with yellow pigment spots and within some it is possible to see reddish or pinkish patches of blood cells through their translucent bodies. Eventually they descend to the seafloor, develop into adults and complete their life cycle<\/a>, considered the most common cycle in the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n

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