{"id":326660,"date":"2025-12-05T08:33:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326660\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T08:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:33:13","slug":"a-snorkeler-in-nova-scotia-thought-this-was-a-leaf-but-it-was-something-far-weirder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326660\/","title":{"rendered":"A Snorkeler in Nova Scotia Thought This Was a Leaf, but It Was Something Far Weirder"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a black blob! It\u2019s a rotten leaf! No, it\u2019s a slug, and a pretty cool one at that.<\/p>\n

Snorkelers in Nova Scotia, Canada, have found a number of Elysia chlorotica, commonly known as eastern emerald elysia<\/a>\u2014elusive slugs that steal the photosynthetic abilities of their food. Studying these creatures could carry implications for various human industries, but they\u2019ve been difficult to study both in the wild and in the lab.<\/p>\n

Not a rotten leaf <\/p>\n

When snorkeler Elli Ofthenorth, admin of the Facebook group<\/a> Snorkel \ud83d\udc99 Nova Scotia, first spotted the slug, she \u201cjust thought, oh, that\u2019s a rotten leaf, keep going,\u201d she told CBC<\/a>. It wasn\u2019t until her third time swimming past it that she paid closer attention and realized it wasn\u2019t just a leaf. \u201cI just started yelling, there\u2019s a sea slug here!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChloroticaE. chlorotica look like leaves. \u00a9 Elli Ofthenorth <\/p>\n

We can forgive Ofthenorth for mistaking an E. chlorotica for a rotten leaf. When the enigmatic slug eats the alga Vaucheria litorea, its primary food source, it starts using the plant\u2019s chloroplasts<\/a>\u2014the organelles that photosynthesize\u2014to create energy for itself. The chloroplasts turn the slug green, and it looks remarkably like a leaf, veins and all, which works both as camouflage and an effective photosynthesizer. The green is temporary, and the slug eventually turns gray.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like if I ate a whole bunch of spinach and then I just woke up this morning and I just sunbathed for an hour and then I wouldn\u2019t need to eat for the rest of the week,\u201d Hunter Stevens, a biologist with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society\u2019s Nova Scotia chapter and a member of Ofthenorth\u2019s Facebook group, told CBC. \u201cThese slugs are essentially doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the slugs appear to consume algae only at the beginning<\/a> of their lives, with the chloroplasts working their entire lifetimes. But since E. chlorotica can live for long periods of time without<\/a> sunlight, researchers aren\u2019t sure of the extent to which the slugs rely on the organelle\u2019s photosynthesis.<\/p>\n

Ephemeral populations <\/p>\n

After Ofthenorth\u2019s discovery near Halifax, Stevens also went in search of E. chlorotica and was greatly rewarded\u2014he found hundreds of individuals, according to his social media post<\/a>. \u201cYes, it\u2019s a slug that photosynthesizes like a plant!\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey also have remarkable regenerative abilities, with laboratory studies showing they can regrow their bodies even if they are decapitated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChloroticaAnother perspective of an E. chlorotica. \u00a9 Elli Ofthenorth <\/p>\n

Understanding how E. chlorotica can go without eating, living only on sunlight, for seemingly immeasurable amounts of time could have practical applications for areas such as clean energy technology, drug treatments, wound repair, and more, according to the CBC.<\/p>\n

But while the slugs live along North America\u2019s east coast, from Nova Scotia all the way down to southern Florida, researchers have had a hard time getting their hands on them.<\/p>\n

The slug\u2019s populations are \u201cephemeral,\u201d Patrick Krug, a researcher at the College of Natural & Social Sciences at California State University, Los Angeles, told the Canadian broadcaster. They seem to cycle through periods of abundance and sudden disappearance. Plus, they\u2019re divas\u2014they live in particular habitats and have particular eating habits, which could contribute to the difficulty of spotting them in the wild and sustaining populations of multiple generations in labs, the CBC said.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether \u201cthese beautiful emerald angels,\u201d as Stevens described them in his post, will yield any of their enduring secrets any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a black blob! It\u2019s a rotten leaf! No, it\u2019s a slug, and a pretty cool one at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,31731,132633,66,59982],"class_list":{"0":"post-326660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-marine-animals","11":"tag-photosynthesis","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-slugs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}