Boothbay Register reports on DMC scientist’s sea slug research
The Boothbay Register and The Maine Edge carried a University of Maine news release on sea slug research by Doug Rasher, a postdoctoral research associate at the Darling Marine Center. Rasher and his team discovered an underwater sea slug has evolved chemical foraging and defense abilities that are functionally identical to those of terrestrial insects, despite being unrelated to their land-based counterparts and living in vastly different habitats for 400 million years. “Specialized herbivores on land and sea appear to make a living in similar ways,” said Rasher, whose team’s findings have been published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” In seagrass beds off the Florida Keys, the sea slug Elysia tuca hunts its prey, the seaweed Halimeda incrassata, by honing in on chemical cues the seaweed emits, Rasher said.