Some of the ocean’s most striking sea slugs—aeolid nudibranchs—possess an extraordinary ability: they can feed on stinging cnidarians without being harmed, and then capture and reuse their prey’s stinging cells, known as nematocysts, for their own defence.
New scientific findings have now shed light on how they do it, offering a clearer picture of this remarkable biological strategy.
A vegetarian sap-sucking sea slug that can regrow its entire body? Underwater photographer Wesley Oosthuizen takes a closer look at this curious little marine critter.
Natural products play an invaluable role as a starting point in the drug discovery process, and plants and animals use many interesting biologically active natural products as chemical defence mechanisms against predators. Among marine organisms, many nudibranch gastropods are known to obtain toxins from what they are eating, such as sponges.
These toxins are used as chemical defences and bright colours to warn potential predators away,
Kinki is a ruggedly beautiful peninsula in the southwest of Honshu, Japan. The area is best known for the Shinto shrines of Kumano, which sit atop forested mountains in the center of the region. Each year, thousands of tourists and devotees undertake a pilgrimage through the mountains to reach the tranquil sanctuary, which is said to be a place of physical healing.
Over the years, new species have been found and existing species have been moved to other genera while other species are new. Thus, our colleague Christian Skauge writes that the Flabellina family has now gone "extinct" in Norway because the species therein have now been reclassified and put into other genera.
Weird creatures from inner space.
