There’s a "ruthless predator" in the ocean that harpoons its prey and feasts on the toxic algae that can harm ecosystems when it forms huge blooms.
It’s not a shark, a squid or even an ambush predator like the venomous stonefish but a type of predatory plankton called Polykrikos kofoidii. And it glows in the dark, creating slow, dim flashes of blue-green light like a broken nightlight.
P. kofoidii is a dinoflagellate: a single-celled aquatic organism. Although this species is found all over the world, scientists don’t know much about it.
What they do know is that, although it’s tiny, this plankton is a wily predator that uses harpoon-like structures to catch prey before swallowing them whole.
According to a statement from Michael Latz, a marine biologist emeritus at Scripps Oceanography, this species is “a ruthless predator”. Among its victims are types of toxic plankton that cause problematic algal blooms (red tides).
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Now, scientists have studied P. kofoidii’s bioluminescence and found that its light production is different from other species of dinoflagellate. The findings are published in the Journal of Phycology
There are thousands of species of dinoflagellates, some of which produce a beautiful blue-green light. Perhaps the most famous of these is the bioluminescent 'sea sparkle' (Noctiluca scintillans): another predatory plankton that causes waves to glow like a highlighter pen as they break against the shoreline.
Although the bioluminescence created by P. kofoidii is a similar blue-green colour to that created by other glowing dinoflagellates, there are some key differences. Other species have a light-creating molecule called luciferin inside certain parts the cell, but P. kofoidii has luciferin all over.
“We were surprised to see this fluorescence distributed across the entire cell, rather than concentrated in distinct organelles,” says Latz. “This suggests that P. kofoidii may store or regulate its light-producing molecules in a fundamentally different way from other species.”
They also found that its flashes of light are slower and dimmer than those of other species.
Understanding how this species produces light, and how its bioluminescent is different from other organisms, “could lead to a better understanding of marine ecosystems, as well as the evolution, chemistry and potential functions of bioluminescence,” says co-author Brittany Sprecher, formerly of Scripps Oceanography and now a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“We are still investigating why and how this organism uses such an unusual setup and whether this trait is found in other understudied dinoflagellates,” she adds. “We also identified interesting features in the proteins involved in its bioluminescence.”
Now, the experts want to find out what impact P. kofoidii’s preference for harmful algae could have on ecosystems. “Could P. kofoidii be used to help manage toxic algal blooms that are known to devastate coastal economies?” wonders Dimitri Deheyn, a marine biologist at Scripps Oceanography.
Top image: Fluorescence confocal microscope image of a live Polykrikos kofoidii cell. Credit: Brittany Sprecher and Michael Latz
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