The giant plum anemone is an animal, but it looks a bit like an underwater cauliflower.
Its body consists of a stalk-like pillar, one end attached to rocks and other surfaces, and the other end attached to the tentacle crown.
Sea anemones use these antennae to collect food and stuff them into their mouths, and a new study delves into the rich diversity of anemones catching prey.
This includes a surprising menu item: ants, especially woolly mountain ants, and the occasional spider.
The study focused on giant plum anemones, which are fixed to the sides and bottoms of floating docks in the San Juan Islands area of northwestern Washington state.
The research team used a method called DNA metacoding to identify intestinal details of more than a dozen giant plum anemones.
The diet of the species is dominated by arthropods, especially crabs (presumably larvae, the researchers say), but also barnacles (larvae or molts), copepods, and insects.
The researchers say they often eat anything they can catch, anything that's not too big or too small, anything that can't swim around.
One of the most surprising results was that at the time of the study it was about 10%, made up of ants, which were not marine life.
By digging into the natural history of ants, the researchers have come up with possible explanations for how these ants became part of the ocean's food chain.
The researchers said that ants have the behavior of flying mating, but their flight ability is not strong, and the wind pushes them around, and it is possible to fall into the water.
The team's results suggest that giant plum anemones also eat occasional spiders, as well as some insects, in addition to ants that may hover too close to the water's edge and drown.
The study was a collaboration between Wells, Dr. Gustav Paulay of the Florida Museum of Natural History, Dr. Bryan Nguyen of George Washington University, and Dr. Matthiu Leray of the Smithsonian Institute for Tropical Research.
Wells, who now works in the geology department at UB College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study at the Port Laboratory on Friday when he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington.
By extracting genetic material from a slurry mixture of partially digested food, the researchers were able to conduct reverse studies, comparing their results with information stored in a database about the DNA of various organisms.
Part of our study, the researchers say, is to use this approach, known as DNA metacoding, and compare it to traditional techniques.
With the DNA metacoding, you can determine what species it is.
When trying to understand how ocean communities work, it is indispensable to know what an animal eats.
When plankton communities float on anemone beds, plankton are filtered out by millions of grabbing tentacles.
This can dramatically alter the composition of plankton communities, which are food for many animals of economic value, such as bivalves and fish.
While the researchers were able to identify many species preyed upon by giant plum anemones, Paulay, director of invertebrate zoology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, noted that they were unable to match a significant portion of the DNA sequence to any known organism, underscoring how much remains to be discovered in the ocean.