Anna Santana |
Santa Cruz de Tenerife (EFE).- The “Micromelo undatus”, a tiny, strikingly colored sea snail found on the coast of Gran Canaria, opts to be named “International Mollusc of the Year” this Thursday, a recognition whose reward consists of sequencing its genome and thus help to unravel information about its genetic makeup and evolution.
What is this beauty? asks about “Micromelo undatus” the presentation page of the five finalists for the 2023 International Mollusc, a contest organized by the Senckenberg Nature Research Society in collaboration with the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics and the Worldwide Society for Mollusc Research (Unitas Malacologica).
“It is the only contest worldwide in which citizens are given the opportunity to vote in the investigation of which organism or species they want to spend the public money to which the prize has been allocated,” he explained in an interview with EFE. the researcher Aketza Herrero-Barrencua, from the Department of Biology of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC).
A research that he shares with Carles Galiá, from the University of Barcelona (UB), in his Department of Genetics, and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio), in the part corresponding to the Mediterranean.
“This species is a jewel that everyone would like to find”, continues the page of its candidacy, where it is explained that it is a unique species, which originated 200 million years ago, lives in shallow waters, up to 10 meters, and its tiny shell of less than 25 millimeters is white, with thin red lines and a geometric shape.
Aketza Herrero-Barrencua details that the Micromelo undatus is an amphiatlantic species of temperate waters and ranges from Ascension Island and Macaronesia (archipelagos of Cape Verde, the Canary Islands and the Azores) to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Curaçao and Brazil.
However, “it is in various locations on the island of Gran Canaria where we have observed over several years that they occur on a regular basis and that, in some specific locations, a large number of them occur in a timely manner coinciding with the breeding season,” he explains.
Among divers and underwater photographers, this snail is well known for presenting very characteristic and colorful mantle colors and shell patterns that make it “visually striking and photogenic.”
In this regard, he details that the almost translucent hyaline mantle has white spots and a diffuse bluish line around the edge that ends with a marked fluorescent yellow line.
The shell, small compared to the mantle, is white with a very characteristic geometric pattern of thin red lines. Under ultraviolet light, it presents remarkable fluorescences.
Entering on the scientific level, adds Aketza Herrero-Barrencua, it is a basal heterobranch mollusk, which makes it possible to make phylogenetic relationships with slugs and snails, so that “by studying its genome we can elucidate hypotheses of evolutionary transitions between large groups, such as For example, the evolution of slugs and snails (with the creation of the shell as a defense mechanism) and vice versa (loss of the shell again), and even the evolutionary transition between marine and terrestrial gastropod molluscs”.
The majority of marine heterobranchs (slugs and snails) crawl along the bottom with their characteristic slowness, which makes them easy potential prey for predators to hunt and for this reason the main defense mechanism they have developed is based on the assimilation of toxic metabolites from the diet (sponges, cnidarians, algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, bryozoans and other marine invertebrates).
In the case of Micromelo undatus, which has an omnivorous diet, it feeds mainly on algae, organic debris, zooplankton, and other small invertebrates, including polychaetes (a broad class of annelid worms).
A very common characteristic that organisms with this type of toxic defense have is aposematic coloration: many of these species wear striking and showy colors as a warning, the researcher points out.
And if Micromelus is chosen as the winner on the 23rd, it would receive recognition for the sequencing of its genome, a prize valued at approximately 10,000-20,000 euros (about 10,700-21,400 dollars), and thus it would try to shed light on a multitude of phylogenetic, evolutionary and ecological, among others.
Sequencing the genome of an animal species can provide a large amount of information about its genetic composition and its evolution and some of the possible contributions are, regarding the genetic composition, offering clues about the number of genes it possesses, their size and their organization .
This can help to understand how different genes interact to regulate biological processes in the species but also can provide information about the evolutionary relationship between different species and thus understand how species have adapted to different environments and how they have evolved over time. .
In addition, genome sequencing can help identify genetic mutations that may be related to diseases and thus lead to the development of more precise and personalized treatments.
Micromelus undatus presents a wide range of possibilities in terms of understanding the evolution of mollusks and unraveling the processes that led to the formation of distinctive structures and the transition of mollusks from aquatic to terrestrial environments, and has unique characteristics to study, like the genes responsible for iridescent colors, glow mechanisms, and ocean colonization.