{"id":4174,"date":"2014-09-19T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/?p=4174"},"modified":"2014-09-19T14:19:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T18:19:09","slug":"marine-organism-of-the-week-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/2014\/09\/19\/marine-organism-of-the-week-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Organism of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><span style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica','sans-serif'\">Elysia chlorotica,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica','sans-serif'\"> the Eastern Emerald Elysia<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<table style=\"height: 27px\" width=\"250\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div id=\"attachment_4175\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/files\/2014\/09\/Elysia-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4175\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4175\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/files\/2014\/09\/Elysia-1-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"Elysia feeding\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4175\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Elysia feeding on the filamentous alga, Vaucheria.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Image Source: http:\/\/www.thetripatorium.com\/images\/uploads\/Echlorotica940.jpg<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/td>\n<td>\n<div id=\"attachment_4176\" style=\"width: 207px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/files\/2014\/09\/Elysia-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4176\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4176\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/files\/2014\/09\/Elysia-2-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"Elysia dorsal view\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4176\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dorsal parapodia of Elysia as exposed to the sun.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Image Source: http:\/\/geek-prime.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Elysia-chlorotica-plantobesto.jpg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica','sans-serif'\"><a href=\"http:\/\/eol.org\/pages\/450768\/overview\" target=\"_blank\">Elysia chlorotica<\/a>, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-family: 'Helvetica','sans-serif'\">or the Eastern Emerald Elysia, is a sea slug that gets much of its energy from the sun via photosynthesis! Sea slugs are a kind of mollusk (related to snails) that normally get their energy from consuming algae, bryozoans, or cnidarians. However, <i>Elysia<\/i> is a &#8220;kleptoplast,&#8221; meaning that it &#8220;steals&#8221; the chloroplasts from the algae that it eats. They feed on the algal species <i>Vaucheria litorea<\/i>, and as the contents of the algal cells move down its digestive tract, chloroplasts are absorbed (by phagocytosis) into the body of the slug. <i>Elysia<\/i> have incorporated the genetic material of algae into their genome (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/93\/22\/12333.full.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">read more<\/a>), so the chloroplasts remain functional inside the slug. These kleptoplasts have evolved parapodia (wings) that give it a large dorsal surface area like a leaf, allowing them to effectively use their chloroplasts to capture energy from the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elysia chlorotica, the Eastern Emerald Elysia Image Source: http:\/\/www.thetripatorium.com\/images\/uploads\/Echlorotica940.jpg &nbsp; Image Source:&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_prepend":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_append":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_append_before_footer":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4188,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions\/4188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}