SURREAL Funposting

моя оцифрована особистість (mind uploading)

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this is my new gender? Seafloor surface connections This is a deep-sea isopod. Deep-ocean Biologist Dr. Johanna Weston is confident this is Bathyopsurus nybelini, one of her favorite animals. In 2024, she served as a coauthor on a paper documenting how the species has evolved to exploit a resource that links the ocean surface to the deep seafloor: sargassum, a brown macroalgae (seaweed) found throughout tropical waters (paper link in bio). The authors found that Bathyopsurus nybelini is physiologically and behaviorally adapted to take advantage of the sunken seaweed. Unlike most isopods, they swim upside down and backward using large paddle-like legs, allowing them to lift and transport pieces of sargassum off the seafloor and into the water column, likely to evade predators. This isopod also possesses serrated and grinding mouthparts well-suited for tearing apart tough sargassum fronds, @death.by.dimples (Weston) says. Observations of this animal are rare. Swedish scientists collected specimens in 1948. Even then, scientists noted something unusual: the stomach contents included pieces of sargassum, hinting at a possible connection between this deep-sea isopod and surface-floating seaweed. 70 years later, during a @whoi.ocean expedition, scientists collected 32 Bathyopsurus nybelini. They found most of the animals carrying pieces of sargassum — just like you can see in this footage, recorded at 3,610 m during the #Doldrums expedition. What excites Dr. Weston most is that it is another record of Bathyopsurus nybelini interacting with sargassum in its natural habitat. Every new observation helps scientists understand whether these behaviors are rare curiosities or a regular part of their ecology. For her, this footage further supports the idea that the association between Bathyopsurus and sargassum is a recurring ecological relationship rather than a chance encounter. "Floating sargassum supports entire ecosystems at the ocean surface,” Dr. Weston wrote. “When pieces eventually sink into the deep ocean, they become food for specialized animals living thousands of meters below, creating a direct connection between life at the surface and life in the deep sea.”