Research suggests that bizarre,
tentacled worms which live attached to crayfish in the rivers of Australia are
at risk of extinction - because the crayfish themselves are endangered.
It would be an example of
coextinction, where one organism dies out because it depends on another doomed
species.
Just a few millimetres long, the
worms eat even tinier critters in the water or inside the crayfish gill
chamber.
Their symbiotic relationship
stretches back at least 80 million years.
The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society B, map out that shared history based on genetic analysis of 37
different species of spiny mountain crayfish and their
"temnocephalan" flatworm passengers.
"We've now got a picture of
how these two species have evolved together through time," said Dr
Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from the University of Cambridge.
She and her colleagues conclude
that it was some 80-100 million years ago that these two types of animal
started to evolve together.
The Australian continent was
about halfway through its gradual northward march to its current position on
the globe and as it progressed, the creatures' habitat started to fragment and
shrink.
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