Warren Currie 🦠🦐Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦠🦐
Some #copepods have resin and silica lined "opal" teeth called gnathobases - which is a great word! These hardened mandibles are used to crunch open the silica frustules of #diatom algae (viewed as co-evolutionary pressure). They are replaced at molt, but adults only get the one set, and they wear down. Eventually, they must settle for #feeding on less crunchy diatoms, smaller cells, or the softer cellulose covered dinoflagellates.
#Science
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407876121
Some #copepods have resin and silica lined "opal" teeth called gnathobases - which is a great word! These hardened mandibles are used to crunch open the silica frustules of #diatom algae (viewed as co-evolutionary pressure). They are replaced at molt, but adults only get the one set, and they wear down. Eventually, they must settle for #feeding on less crunchy diatoms, smaller cells, or the softer cellulose covered dinoflagellates.
#Science
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407876121
