I threw the dead alligator into the deep sea → I was devoured at a tremendous speed!

Thursday, December 16th, 19:30 GIZMODO

Image: CR McClain et al., 2019. The article on January 22, 2020, which devours the dead body of the alligator, has been edited and reprinted. I was hungry ... Experiments to see how deep-sea organisms react when rare food sources emerge, and the results are very interesting. This research, which was featured in Gizmodo in the US last April. The long-awaited result was finally published in the open access scientific journal PLOS One. Interesting new facts about the project are detailed by the authors, led by Craig McClain and Clifton Nunnally of the Institute of Marine Sciences (LUMCON), University of Louisiana. It seems like an unrelated combination of alligators feasting in the deep sea where food is scarce and the deep seabed, but reptiles are simply swept away by extreme weather like hurricanes, perhaps to find new food sources. Maybe it's far from the shore. But sometimes these alligators die while in the ocean, and their bodies sink to the bottom of the sea. Food from above is a valuable gift because the food on the seabed is scarce and inadequate for the creatures that live on the seabed. "There is no photosynthesis in the deep sea because of the lack of sunlight," said River Dixon, a postdoctoral fellow at the McClain Lab at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in an email to Gizmodo. "There are no typical organisms that form the basis of the food web, that is, plants and marine systems that do not have plant-like organisms called phytoplankton. Instead, the decaying organisms that fall from the shallow waters. Marine snow, a collection of excrement and other organic deposit debris, arrives as food for deep-sea organisms. ”The phytoplankton that devours the dead alligator Image: CR McClain et al., 2019. But Dixon explains. As such, this marine snow is not enough to maintain the abundance of the seabed, causing a "carbon mystery". “A lot of effort has been put into investigating plants such as whales, large fish, and even trees and kelp as a potential source of this deficient carbon,” says Dixon. "Recently, we've seen alligators and crocodile that take advantage of the marine environment, so we've seen the impact of large reptile carcasses on the deep-sea food network and the large reptile carcasses as a potential carbon pathway to the deep sea. I decided to do this experiment to find out. " What is the result of placing three alligators at a depth of 2,000 m? In the experiment, three alligators (American alligators) were placed along the continental slope of the northern Gulf of Mexico at a depth of 2,000 m. As we head to the experiment, the LUMCON team expects the hard skin of the alligator to be difficult for scavengers to eat and the carcasses to be left untouched for a long time. But they were wrong. All the creatures in the deep sea were immediately caught in this rare food source, and a completely new species was discovered. 51 days after the alligator was dropped to the seabed, all that was left was bone. Image: LUMCON At the place where the first alligator was thrown in, a giant isopod flooded the carcass and broke through its skin in less than 24 hours. These football-sized creatures didn't seem to suffer from the thick skins of reptiles, and the video shows a giant isopod eating a piece of meat with delight. They are creatures that can fast for years. The researchers visited the second alligator 51 days after the throw, by which time all the meat had been stripped. With the exception of one amphipod moving around in search of the last meal, all that was left was the skeleton. The orientation of the bones, including the bent spine, remained with the researchers, but the head was turned over, probably due to the activity of the scavenger. The brownish fluffy thing is a new species of Osedax japonicus (zombie worm) that eats bones Image: LUMCON A new species of Osedax japonicus that eats bones was also discovered. The brownish fluffy bones that had adhered to the bones were later identified as a new species of the genus Osedax, a bone-eating organism called zombie worms. "Osedax japonicus feeds on the lipids found in the bones of all vertebrates," Dixon said. "Comparing the DNA of the organism we collected with the DNA of the known genus Osedax confirmed that it was a new species." Notable as it is also the first recorded example of eating. "Further experiments may reveal whether this new species, Osedax, is a reptile specialist or widely found in vertebrate carcasses in the bay," Dixon adds. The third alligator was dead! The situation was a little different for the third alligator. Eight days after dropping into the sea, researchers returned to the point of fall, and the corpse that was supposed to be there had disappeared. All that was left was a submarine depression and marking device that once indicated that the creature was there. Eight days after the throw, the alligator disappeared suddenly. Image: LUMCONDixon and his colleagues say they were shocked by the lack of a corpse. "We're doing a ROV dive and we were in a shipping container on the deck of the ship, gathering around a TV screen showing video from a robot on the ocean floor," he says. "When I approached the point where I installed the corpse of the alligator a week ago, I couldn't see anything. I looked at each other's faces, saying," You're right here, right? " However, the marking device I was wearing on the corpse was still there, so when I went to the installation site, there was a dent made of the corpse. Eventually, LUMCON researchers discovered the trail and were led to the weight and rope that were tied to the corpse. According to Dixon, the rope was completely bitten off at a distance of 9m from the original point. There were no traces of alligator left. "Whatever it is, it's a giant creature. The total weight of the corpse and weight is over 36 kg, and its shape and length should make it quite difficult to move," Dixon said. "In our calculations, the strength required to bite through the rope should be as strong as a giant shark," researchers suspect that it was the crime of a greenland shark or a shark shark that could eat an entire alligator. So, alligators thrown into the deep sea led to different observations, demonstrating the discovery of new species and the adaptability of the marine life on the ocean floor. Source: PLOS, YouTube

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