Limpet, Heal Thyself… |

Limpet, Heal Thyself…

What’s the most stubborn creature you can imagine? No, not a toddler in the middle of a tantrum. Not a dog with a bone. Not even Jack Black when it’s time to give up the stage….

Meet the limpet, the marine mollusk with a shallow conical shell. Yeah, they may not be the first thing that come to mind here, but limpets really are the very definition of tenacious. When a limpet clamps down onto a rock surface, it’s sealed up like Fort Knox. The limpet will allow itself to be destroyed before it lets go of the rock it’s clamped onto.

Limpets live all over the world in tidal areas (the Slipper Limpet, which is native to the East Coast of North America, is invasive in many parts of the UK and Ireland). They may stray from their home spot to find food, but they find their way back home again before the tide goes out. Limpets eat algae that grows on the rocks where they live by scraping the surface with ribbon-like tongue that has rows of teeth, called a radula. Their primary predators underwater are crabs and sea stars, and birds are their biggest threat when the tide is out.

Limpets can live more than 15 years, and have some interesting survival tricks up their shells, so to speak. Some species of limpet have been discovered to undergo a male to female sex change. In this particular species of limpet, all of the small individuals are male; once they reach a certain size, they change to become female.

But even more interesting to many researchers are their healing properties. Bioengineers at Trinity University in Dublin, Ireland, have discovered that limpets are able to remodel their shells when damaged. The research team simulated the kinds of stresses limpets experience in their natural habitats, such as environmental stresses that might occur in rough seas, or aging stresses from shell weathering, and even survival stresses, like limpets would endire when being attacked by birds or other predators. These limpets actively repaired their shells by depositing new biological material, in a process similar to how bones heal in mammals. After 60 days, the shells were back to their original protective strength, though they were never as thick as before.

Ultimately, limpets may seem unassuming and even fragile, but they are indeed a quite stubborn species, determined to survive and grow in all manner of environments, and we may yet learn a lot about our own abilities to adapt and survive by watching these little creatures more closely.

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Curriculum Reference Links

Nature of Science / Understanding About Science / 1: Students should be able to appreciate how scientists work and how scientific ideas are modified over time

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

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