Sea Slug,First Half Animal/Half Plant.

[Steve McKay]

Sea Slug,First Half Animal/Half Plant.It produces it's own food from chlorophyll and lives in salt marshes in New England and Canada.Link to article.Sea slug surprise: It?s half-plant, half-animal - LiveScience- msnbc.com

[ChicagoReef]

Wow that's a cool way of living. Thanks for the article.

[Ninong]

Article Totally Misrepresented the Facts

That article is a complete joke, beginning with the hilariously misleading title. It is not "half animal/half plant" by a long shot. The so-called science writer is a moron.

It was not just "discovered." This is just some new research into a certain species of Elysia that showed that it can make its own chlorophyll. If they performed the same research on some of the other species in that genus, e.g. Elysia crispata, they might find that other species have the same ability.

The caption next to the picture makes a totally FALSE claim: "This green slug, which is part animal and part plant, produces its own chlorophyll and so can carry out photosynthesis, turning sunlight into energy, scientists have found."

They found no such thing. It CANNOT carry out photosynthesis on its own because it can't produce the chloroplasts necessary to carry out photosynthesis. If it doesn't have access to the particular algae that it feeds on, it will waste away. It won't be able to "carry out photolsynthesis" as claimed.

So it still has to feed on algae in order to be able to acquire the cells necessary to carry out photosynthesis, the same as E. crispata, the very well known "lettuce sea slug," often incorrectly called a "lettuce nudibranch."

The only thing new here is that they have discovered the gene necessary to produce chlorophyll in E. chlorotica and it had to come from the algae it feeds own. Now all it has to do is figure out a way to acquire all of the other things necessary to perform photosynthesis and it will be good to go. Right now it is not capable of conducting photosynthesis on its own. It still needs to get the chloroplasts from the algae by feeding on the algae on a regular basis.

And it's not "half animal/half plant." That was just sensationalist hyperbole on the part of the idiot who wrote this article and the editor who allowed it to be published.

[Steve McKay]

I knew that the whole time.

[Ninong]

Read this article to understand how Elysia sea slugs acquire the ability to conduct photosynthesis.

Read this article for a listing of the many different species in several different families and orders that have this same ability. It's called kleptoplasty because they steal the means to conduct photosynthesis -- from the algae they feed on in the case of herbivorous sea slugs or from their prey in the case of carnivorous nudibranchs. The nudibranchs steal zooxanthellae.

So this is nothing new. The only thing new is that they found some plant DNA (the gene responsible for producing chlorophyll) in E. chlorotica. Now they should conduct the same tests on E. crispata because you would certainly never be able to tell by just looking at them. Both E. chlorotica and E. crispata will waste away if they don't have acess to the proper algae to feed on because neither species can conduct photosynthesis on their own. They have to steal chloroplasts from algae.