After Meal of Algae, Slugs Make Own Food

Summary


LOS ANGELES - Part animal, part plant! This may sound like a tabloid headline, but scientists showed earlier this year that a green sea slug has managed to incorporate enough algae parts to easily live off of sunlight, just as a plant does.

Scientists already knew that a handful of slugs, including the leaf-shaped Elysia chlorotica, could eat algae but save the algae's chloroplasts from digestion, and feed off of the remaining energy from the chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are where photosynthesis occurs - that is, the plant process of turning light into energy.

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Extract


After Meal of Algae, Slugs Make Own Food

But this was not a self-sustaining system, since most slugs cannot make their own chlorophyll,...

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