地球生物学:新たな胎生動物の生息地を発見(Geobiology: new placozoan habitat discovered)

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2024-04-11 ミュンヘン大学(LMU)

海岸の水域に生息するプラコゾアンは、過去に岩やサンゴなどの堅い表面や海岸水域での浮遊が主な生息地と考えられてきました。しかし、研究チームは海底の堆積物にも生息しており、遺伝的にはより多様であることを発見しました。プラコゾアンは微小なため環境での研究が難しく、ウミウシの胃内からのDNA分析を通じてこれらの発見が可能となりました。

<関連情報>

野獣の中の美女 – 軟体動物捕食者のゲノム解析からプラコゾアンの生物多様性を探る Beauty in the beast – Placozoan biodiversity explored through molluscan predator genomics

Michael Eitel, Hans-Jürgen Osigus, Bastian Brenzinger, Gert Wörheide
Ecology and Evolution  Published: 11 April 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11220

地球生物学:新たな胎生動物の生息地を発見(Geobiology: new placozoan habitat discovered)

Abstract

The marine animal phylum Placozoa is characterized by a poorly explored cryptic biodiversity combined with very limited knowledge of their ecology. While placozoans are typically found as part of the epibenthos of coastal waters, known placozoan predators, namely small, shell-less sea slugs belonging to the family Rhodopidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Heterobranchia), inhabit the interstitium of seafloor sediment. In order to gain further insights into this predator–prey relationship and to expand our understanding of placozoan ecological niches, we screened publicly available whole-body metagenomic data from two rhodopid specimens collected from coastal sediments. Our analysis not only revealed the signatures of three previously unknown placozoan lineages in these sea slug samples but also enabled the assembly of three complete and two partial mitochondrial chromosomes belonging to four previously described placozoan genera, substantially extending the picture of placozoan biodiversity. Our findings further refine the molecular phylogeny of the Placozoa, corroborate the recently established taxonomic ranks in this phylum, and provide molecular support that known placozoan clades should be referred to as genera. We finally discuss the main finding of our study – the presence of placozoans in the sea floor sediment interstitium – in the context of their ecological, biological, and natural history implications.

生物化学工学
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