In a typical food web, the sun is the ultimate source of energy. Plants use light energy to make food through photosynthesis. Animals eat plants or other animals. But in the ocean, some organisms get their energy from chemically synthesizing bacteria. Recently, researchers reported in Contemporary Biology that in shallow waters, chemical synthesis also plays an unexpected role, feeding the most profitable fishing organism in Central America: caribbean lobsters.
The researchers said the full moon clam gets its food from the chemical synthetic bacteria that live under its gills, while the full moon clam makes up 20 percent of the lobster's food. The findings provide the first experimental evidence that chemically synthesized primary products contribute to the operations of important commercial fishing vessels, which generate more than $450 million in annual revenue.
"We found that a lot of the food of the Caribbean lobster is a clam, and this clam that uses its own synthetic bacteria to make food is not common." Nicholas Higgs of the University of Plymouth in the UK said, "This chemically synthesized food source represents an alternative to traditional food chains based on photosynthesis. ”
In the deep-sea environment, where sunlight cannot reach, chemical synthesis is considered an important source of basic energy. On the other hand, the role of full moon clams in the food chain, which live in shallow seagrasses, has been a mystery. In the new study, Higgs and colleagues monitored lobsters and found that the creatures were "relishing" the chewing of full moon clams. After stable isotopic analysis of lobster tissue, scientists believe that full moon clams constitute 1/5 of the lobster's food. For some lobster populations, this number will double.
The researchers note that these findings suggest that a large portion of the lobster diet comes from clams that use chemical energy to make food. This helps explain the relationship between the high production of lobster farms in the Caribbean and the nearby seagrass environment. Seagrass environmental and chemical synthesis yields play an important role in lobsters. (Zhang Zhang)
China Science Daily (2016-12-27 2nd Edition International)
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