California sea hare
| California Sea Slug | |
|---|---|
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|
| An Aplysia californica releasing ink after being disturbed | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Heterobranchia clade Euthyneura clade Euopisthobranchia clade Aplysiomorpha |
| Superfamily: | Aplysioidea |
| Family: | Aplysiidae |
| Genus: | Aplysia |
| Species: | A. californica |
| Binomial name | |
| Aplysia californica (James Graham Cooper, 1863) |
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The California sea hare also known as the California sea slug, scientific name Aplysia californica, is a species of sea slug, specifically a sea hare, a marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusk in the sea hare family, Aplysiidae.
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[edit] Distribution
This species lives in the sea off California and northern Mexico but can be also found off the beaches of Florida.
[edit] Description
The California sea hare can be very large - the maximum recorded length is seventy-five cm (thirty inches) when crawling and thus fully extended, although most adult specimens are half this size or smaller.
A closely related species, Aplysia vaccaria, the black sea hare, can grow to be larger still.
[edit] Genomics
Sequencing of the whole genome has been approved as a priority by National Human Genome Research Institute on March 2005.[1][2] The draft genome is available on the UCSC Genome browser[3]
[edit] Life cycle
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Like all sea hares, the California sea hare is hermaphroditic, acting as male and female simultaneously during mating. The eggs are yellow, but after 8 to 9 days change into a brown color before hatching into larvae. When this annual animal is laying eggs, it has reached the end of its life. Its lifetime depends somewhat on the temperature of the water: 14-25 degrees Celsius is best, but a cooler temperature delays spawning and extends its life somewhat.
When it is considerably disturbed, as shown in the photograph at the top right, the sea hare is capable of releasing reddish-purple ink (much like an octopus does) from a gland in its mantle cavity.
[edit] Feeding habits
Like all Aplysia species, the California sea hare is herbivorous. Its diet consists primarily of red algae, which gives the animal its typically reddish or pinkish coloration.
[edit] Laboratory use
Aplysia californica has become a valuable laboratory animal, used in studies of the neurobiology of learning and memory, and is especially associated with the work of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel.
Its ubiquity in synaptic plasticity studies can be attributed to its simple nervous system, consisting of just a few thousand large, easily-identified neurons. Despite its seemingly simple nervous system, however, Aplysia californica is capable of a variety of non-associative and associative learning tasks, including sensitization, habituation, and classical and operant conditioning. Study typically involves a reduced preparation of the gill and siphon withdrawal reflex.
[edit] References
- ^ Approved Sequencing Targets. Last updated 14 September 2009. Accessed 24 November 2009
- ^ National Human Genome Research Institute (1 March 2005) "NHGRI Targets 12 More Organisms for Genome Sequencing". NIH new Releases, Last Updated: 12 June 2009.
- ^ [1]
[edit] Further reading
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- Scott F Cummins, Dirk Erpenbeck, Zhihua Zou, Charles Claudianos, Leonid L Moroz, Gregg T Nagle & Bernard M Degnan. 2009. Candidate chemoreceptor subfamilies differentially expressed in the chemosensory organs of the mollusc Aplysia. BMC Biology 2009, 7:28. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-7-28.
Moroz L. L., Ju J., Russo J. J., Puthanveetti S., Kohn A., Medina M., Walsh P. J., Birren B., Lander E. S. & Kandel E. R. (2004) "Sequencing the Aplysia Genome: a model for single cell, real-time and comparative genomics". National Human Genome Research Institute. online at http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Research/Sequencing/SeqProposals/AplysiaSeq.pdf Accessed 20 November 2009- Proekt A., Wong J., Zhurov Y., Kozlova N., Weiss K. R. & Brezina V. (7 November 2008) "Predicting Adaptive Behavior in the Environment from Central Nervous System Dynamics". PLoS ONE 3(11): e3678. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003678.
- Wayne N. L. & Block G. D. (1992). "Effect of Photoperiod and Temperature on Egg-Laying Behavior in a Marine Mollusk, Aplysia californica". The Biological bulletin, Marine Biological Laboratory, 182: 8-14.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aplysia californica |
