Underwater Animal Colonies Work Together To Move
Underwater jets on the Nanomia bijug microorganism John H. Costello et al (Nature Comm. DOI: 10/1038/ncomms9158, 2015) Think about how jellyfish or squid move. You're imagining a graceful display of jet propulsion, right? It's not uncommon for underwater species to take advantage of their environment to propel themselves through it. In a study released in Nature Communications today, researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Oregon University, and Stanford University detail how colonies of tiny hydrozoans use jet propulsion in concert with each other. They studied Nanomia bijuga colonies off the coast of Washington state. N. bijuga, like other phsyonects are arranged along a stem. A gas-filled pneumatophore is used as a float on one end of the stem, and the siphosome at the other end take care of feeding and...