Egg-sucking sea slug from Florida's Cedar Key named after Muppets creator Jim Henson

Date:  June 18, 2019

Source:  Florida Museum of Natural History

Feet from the raw bars and sherbet-colored condominiums of Florida's Cedar Key, researchers discovered a new species of egg-sucking sea slug, a rare outlier in a group famous for being ultra-vegetarians.

Named Olea hensoni in honor of Muppets creator Jim Henson, the slug belongs to the sacoglossans, a group of more than 300 species that are such enthusiastic eaters of plants that many of them turn green and some resemble leaves. A few species, nicknamed "solar-powered slugs," have even developed the ability to keep algae alive inside their bodies to photosynthesize their food for them, becoming a fusion of plant and animal.

But O. hensoni has gone rogue, joining two other sacoglossan species -- Olea hansineensis from the northeast Pacific and Calliopaea bellula in the Mediterranean -- that abandoned a diet of seaweed to prey on the eggs of their fellow slugs and snails.

"In the middle of this group of super-herbivores, there are a couple of species that have rebelled in 'The Hills Have Eyes' kind of way and have gone almost full-blown cannibal," said Patrick Krug, professor of biological sciences at California State University. "These are like the Venus fly traps of the slug world. They've switched from being harmless, friendly creatures to predators."

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Scientists fight crab for mysterious purple orb discovered in California deep

E/V Nautilus team find likely sea slug 5,000ft below sea off Santa Barbara

Analysis reveals foot and proboscis, making it ‘a gastropod of some kind’

Alan Yuhas

Saturday 30 July 201611.00 BSTLast modified on Saturday 30 July 201617.37 BST

More than 5,000ft below the surface of the ocean, in a canyon off the coast of southern California, the purple, globular creature appeared to glow under the submersible’s lights.

 “What is that?” one researcher asked, as the submersible’s camera moved over a crab to where the tiny orb hovered near a ledge.

“I’m stumped,” another replied. “I have no idea. I can’t even hazard a guess.”

“Are we going to grab it?” a third asked. The crab, startled by the submarine, scuttled toward the ledge. “Unless the crab gets it first.”

One of the crab’s spindly limbs knocked the orb, but it clung steadfast in place. A researcher guessed it could be related to plankton, the “kind that are sort of lumpy and thick like that”. Another tried “an egg sack of some sort” with “a little embryo type thing inside”.

The team trained a vacuum at the creature, ready to suction it into a storage container.

“It looks like a disco ball right now with the lasers next to it,” one scientist said. Before long, the purple mystery was transferred from the depths to the waiting ship above.

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By Trying It All, Predatory Sea Slug Learns What Not to Eat

June 6, 2013 — Researchers have found that a type of predatory sea slug that usually isn't picky when it comes to what it eats has more complex cognitive abilities than previously thought, allowing it to learn the warning cues of dangerous prey and thereby avoid them in the future.

The research appears in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Pleurobranchaea californica is a deep-water species of sea slug found off the west coast of the United States. It has a relatively simple neural circuitry and set of behaviors. It is a generalist feeder, meaning, as University of Illinois professor of molecular and integrative physiology and leader of the study Rhanor Gillette put it, that members of this species "seem to try anything once."

Another sea slug species, Flabellina iodinea, commonly known as the Spanish shawl because of the orange outgrowths called cerata that cover its purple back, also lives off the west coast. Unlike Pleurobranchaea, however, the Spanish shawl eats only one type of food, an animal called Eudendrium ramosum. According to Gillette, the Spanish shawl digests the Eudendrium's entire body except for its embryonic, developing stinging cells. The Spanish shawl instead transports these stinging cells to its own cerata where they mature, thereby co-opting its victim's body parts for its own defense.

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Special Sea Slug Poised to Make a Comeback Off California

Mar. 18, 2013 — After almost four decades of absence from local waters, a special sea slug appears to be making a comeback, and marine scientists at UC Santa Barbara are eagerly anticipating its return.

With its vivid blue and gold colors and its discovery by UC zoologists in 1901, the nudibranch Felimare californiensis, also known as the California chromodorid, has been a favorite species of sea slug for UC marine scientists and students for decades. But while it held a special place in their hearts, it lost its place in local waters, which once included La Jolla, Corona del Mar, Malibu, and Santa Barbara, as well as all but the two westernmost Channel Islands.

The Felimare californiensis, a sea slug with the

University of California colors, at Catalina Island.

 (Credit: Kenneth Kopp)

"We'll be pretty excited if someone finds the nudibranch in mainland tidepools, after this 35-year hiatus," said Jeff Goddard, project scientist with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. His findings have been published online in a recent edition of the journal Marine Biology.

In the 1970's, the abundant F. californiensis started to disappear from Southern California, and by 1984, was extinct in the region. Its disappearance from the mainland, said Goddard, is unique among the 130 species of sea slugs known to inhabit California waters.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130318133022.htm