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Could giants lurk beneath europa’s icy shell? + Microplastics & ocean food chain

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Could giants lurk beneath europa’s icy shell? (extraterrestrial oceans)
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/could...icy-shell/

EXCERPT: Even in the most inhospitable regions on Earth [...] life finds a way. Nightmarish creatures such as kraken-esque colossal squid, chitinous giant isopods, and jellyfish a meter in diameter have flourished under these harsh conditions. One trick that has helped them thrive: an adaptation known as gigantism, common in the deep seas and frigid waters of the poles.

On Earth, disparate species evolve similar tools to tackle similar problems—a phenomenon called convergent evolution. So if size is a boon in the cold and spooky parts of Earth’s oceans, perhaps it could have convergently evolved among the life forms dwelling in the cold and spooky parts of other worlds?

[...] on Jupiter’s cold, dark, and icy moon Europa, life may exist. And if it does, it could resemble the deep-sea monsters of Earth’s abyssal regions ... The push and pull of the gas giant [Jupiter] on the small moon could be injecting enough energy to cause water to melt deep beneath Europa’s frozen surface, according to NASA. Indeed, scientists ... have observed Europa spewing liquid into space, supporting the hypothesis that water lies below. If Europa does harbor a hidden ocean beneath its icy exterior, NASA expects it to be extremely deep—extending as far as 150 kilometers below the frozen surface, which itself is 25 kilometers thick. The deepest point in Earth’s ocean—the Mariana Trench—is a mere 11 kilometers down.

On Earth, life has taken some truly bizarre forms [...] Such bizarre adaptations might be found in Europan life forms ... there are several hypotheses to explain deep-sea and polar gigantism. One suggests being big makes a creature a more effective predator ... Another suggests the cold slows animals’ metabolisms, causing them to steadily grow larger. (MORE - details)



Lobster digestion of microplastics could further foul the food chain (oceans)
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/press...chain.html

RELEASE: Tiny fragments of plastic waste are dispersed throughout the environment, including the oceans, where marine organisms can ingest them. However, the subsequent fate of these microplastics in animals that live near the bottom of the ocean isn’t clear. Now, researchers report in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology that lobsters can eat and break down some of this microplastic material, releasing even smaller fragments into the water that other deep-sea organisms could ingest.

Microplastic pollution that makes its way into the ocean eventually sinks to the seabed. Nephrops norvegicus, which is also known as the Norway lobster, langoustine or scampi, lives in this region of the ocean, so it is a good indicator species for microplastic contamination of the deep sea. Prior research on the contents of stomachs or entire digestive tracts from lobsters had shown that they can ingest microplastics. And previous lab experiments had shown that a different type of crustacean that lives in the water column, rather than the seabed, can break plastic into smaller particles through digestion. Alessandro Cau and colleagues wanted to know whether this fragmentation happens in nature, and with species dwelling on the seabed.

In lobsters collected near Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea, the researchers found that larger plastic particles became trapped in the crustaceans’ stomachs. However, some particles passed into the “gastric mill,” a complex of small calcified plates that grind against each other to break down food in a lobster’s stomach. This process fragmented some of the plastic into smaller particles, which then moved on to the lobsters’ intestines. In live animals, these smaller fragments would presumably be expelled into the ocean. These findings highlight the existence of a new kind of “secondary” microplastic, introduced into the environment by living organisms, that could represent a significant pathway of plastic degradation in the deep sea, the authors say. They also note that these tinier particles could then be more bioavailable to smaller creatures in the deep-sea food chain.
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