With all eyes (and ears) on important environmental concerns like global warming and rising levels of carbon dioxide, it's remarkable to discover that some species have been displaying the ability to adapt (sometimes negatively) to the changing world around us. One such species seems to be the purple sea urchin.
Purple sea urchins or Strongylocentrotus purpuratus were grown by researchers in order to determine what would happen to echinoderms (such as sea stars and brittle stars) with calcium carbonate spike protrusions under lab conditions that projected potential levels of greenhouse gas emission in the future.
"In response to high carbon dioxide levels, the urchins showed substantial changes in the proportion of genes involved in regulating their cells' pH (the degree of acidity) and skeletal development," LiveScience reports.
Studies of the purple sea urchins under such conditions are significant, as it is believed that with more carbon dioxide being pumped into Earth's atmosphere, there will also be more carbon dioxide in the oceans, thus creating seas made up of more acidic waters.
The big problem for creatures that need to produce shells from calcium carbonate is that these shells are more likely to dissolve in such acidic water.
"The big unanswered question is, if and how marine organisms will be able to respond to ocean acidification," evolutionary biologist Melissa Pespeni said. Pespeni is at Indiana University and is a lead author of the purple sea urchin study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, April 8.
Pespeni and her team discovered that purple sea urchins exposed to higher carbon dioxide levels displayed gene alterations related to growth promotion, creating minerals while maintaining pH within a tolerable range. Purple sea urchins that were exposed to current (and therefore lower) carbon dioxide levels "showed only random genetic variation," according to LiveScience's report.
What this all means is that the purple sea urchins in the higher carbon dioxide-rich environment were exhibiting a semblance of "natural selection" in its urchin larvae. The "fittest" larvae (those with the most adapted genes) survived.
Pespeni explained to LiveScience that she found the idea of purple sea urchins adapting this way to be "excited," though she of course feels it equally important to stress that we must continue to do all we can to "preserve large, robust populations of various animals."
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