- Recent research suggests that deep-sea corals may have been the first animals to glow 540 million years ago.
- Marine life uses light for a variety of purposes, including scaring predators, luring prey, and finding mates.
- Deep-sea soft coral species exhibit bioluminescence, which researchers studied using remote-controlled underwater probes.
Many animals can glow in the dark. Fireflies are famous for their flashing lights on summer nights. However, most of the glowing animals are found in the deep sea.
In a new study, scientists report that deep-sea corals that lived 540 million years ago may have been the first animals to glow, much earlier than previously thought. There is.
“Light signals are one of the earliest forms of communication that we know of and are extremely important in the deep sea,” said the study, published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. said co-author Andrea Quattrini.
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Today, all glowing marine life such as fish, squid, octopuses, jellyfish, and even sharks are the result of chemical reactions.
This April 2024 image provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute shows the bioluminescence of the Sea Whip coral Funiculina. Observed under red light in the laboratory. A new study suggests that the first animals to glow in the dark were corals that lived in the deep sea about 500 million years ago. (Via Manabu Bessho Uehara/MBARI AP)
Some use light to scare predators, “like a burglar alarm,” while others, like anglerfish, use light to lure prey, said Quattrini, curator of corals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. It is said that some people use it.
Still other animals use light as a beacon to find a mate.
Many deep-sea soft corals glow briefly when bumped or stroked with a paintbrush. Scientists attached it to a remote-controlled underwater vehicle and used it to identify and study luminescent species, said study co-author Stephen Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
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Soft corals look like undulating reeds, skeleton fingers or bamboo stalks and may glow pink, orange, white, blue or purple under a researcher’s spotlight, he said.
“In some species, the entire body glows, while in others only parts of the branches glow,” said study co-author Daniel DeLeo, an evolutionary marine biologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
For corals, scientists aren’t sure whether this luminous reaction is meant to attract other organisms, repel them, or both. But its frequency suggests it serves an important function in many coral species, she said.
But when did some coral species have the ability to emit light?
To answer this question, the researchers used genetic data from 185 species of luminescent corals to construct a detailed evolutionary tree. They discovered that the common ancestor of all today’s soft corals lived 540 million years ago and was very likely capable of glowing, or bioluminescent.
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That date is about 270 million years before the oldest example known so far, the glowing prehistoric shrimp. Additionally, the origin of light production is believed to be around the time of the Cambrian Explosion, when life on Earth rapidly evolved and diversified, giving rise to many of the major animal groups that exist today.
“If an animal has a new trait that makes it really special and helps it survive, its descendants are likely to endure it and pass it on,” said Stuart Sandin, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s expensive,” he says. the study.
