A recent study published in the journal Evolution describes a discovery that surprised researchers: spider crabs are able to regenerate their hindquarters.
In a series of experiments, scientists have found that recent specimens of Pycnogonum littoral are able to fully regenerate a number of amputated body parts, including hind legs, parts of their intestines, reproductive organs and even their anus.
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The discovery of this unknown ability of sea spiders surprised scientists; Abilities were unknown until then. Image: AshtonEa Shutterstock
Sea spiders belong to the class Pycnogonida and are a group of approximately 1,300 eightlegged marine arthropods.
Other arthropods, such as certain land spiders, centipedes, and crabs, can also regenerate body parts, allowing them to escape predators that bite them.
However, it has long been thought that spider crabs lack this ability because they have evolved sturdy exoskeletons to protect them from predators, suggesting that they may not need any other form of defense.
In the new study, the researchers tested this assumption by amputating body parts from 23 young and 23 adult spider crabs. The adults could not regenerate any of the lost body parts, but surprisingly most juvenile specimens regenerated the missing parts.
“We were the first to show that this is possible,” Gerhard Scholtz, a zoologist at Humboldt University in Berlin, told French news agency AFP. “Nobody expects.”
During the experiments, the spider crabs had various parts of their hindquarters removed, such as B. their hind legs, hindgut, anus, various muscle regions, and reproductive organs, which include gonoducts in females and gonopores in males.
Aside from failing to regrow lost body parts, most adults died from their injuries, although some individuals who sustained lesser damage were able to survive for up to two years after the test.
However, 16 juveniles survived their amputations and 14 were able to fully regenerate their lost body parts, although some individuals who had all four hind legs removed grew only two replacement legs.
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The authors of the new study note that adults’ inability to regrow lost body parts is likely why adolescents’ regenerative abilities have so far gone unnoticed.
The team now wants to find out the exact mechanism that triggers regeneration in spider crabs and compare it to the regeneration abilities of other arthropods.
“We can try to figure out what triggers regeneration at the cellular level and at the molecular level,” Scholtz said. “It is possible that they are stem cells or undifferentiated cells that can transform into any other type of cell.”
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