At a recent meeting of scientists, a biologist named Sidney K. Pierce reported a surprising observation in these algaeeating sea slugs. Pierce does his research at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Pierce already knew that these sea animals, just like plants, have the right chemical tools to turn sunlight into food. Surprisingly, now he’s learned that sea slugs aren’t simply stealing what they need to do this from algae. They’ve also stolen the recipe for how to make chlorophyll (叶绿素),a chemical that is vital to the process, and can make chlorophyll themselves. In other words, they have started to behave like their food.
“This could be a fusion (融合) of a plant and an animal-that’s just cool,”John Zardus told Science News. Zardus is an invertebrate zoologist at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.. Invertebrates are animals that don’t have backbones ( like slugs), and zoology is the study of animals.
Inside their cells, plants have tiny structures called chloroplasts (叶绿体).These chloroplasts turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar using sunlight and a chemical called chlorophyll, which is known as photosynthesis (光合作用). Like plants, algae that get eaten by sea slugs also use photosynthesis. When Pierce’s slug eats algae, it separates out chloroplasts. Instead of digesting and excreting (排泄) chloroplasts, the sea slug absorbs them inside its own cells. Pierce and his colleagues already knew that once a sea slug has chloroplasts inside its cells, it can use photosynthesis to make food, which means it may not even have to eat for the rest of its life (about a year).
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