Australian scientists have discovered a plant that has managed to reach a size that probably nobody expected. A seagrass stretching for 180 kilometers has been found a few meters under the water at Shark Bay in Western Australia.
Researchers studied this seagrass by sampling various clippings across a large area to understand how genetically diverse the grassland is. The research was aimed at helping protect the seagrass from the impending threat of climate change. While they were trying to find out exactly how many different plants were growing in the meadow, they encountered an unexpected result.
Jane Edgeloe, a student at the University of Western Australia who led the study, published June 1 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said, “We were surprised by the answer – It was just one plant…”
They found that the meadow was home to a single clone of Poseidon’s tapeworm, or Posidonia australis. It seems likely that this plant first sprouted about 4,500 years ago and has grown in Shark Bay all this time, apparently undisturbed.
“It’s really confusing how it survived and grew so long,” said ecologist Martin Breed of Flinders University in South Australia. Breed notes that some subtle genetic differences in its range in Shark Bay may have helped the seagrass to adapt to changing local conditions in the undersea kingdom.
Research will now focus on understanding how this plant develops such resilience to the highly variable environment in which it lives. The resulting insights can be useful for understanding seagrass adaptation, especially as Earth’s oceans begin to warm.
Another report, published the same day in Frontiers in Marine Science, suggests that the future of Australia’s seagrass meadows is threatened by coastal development and climate change. It is stated that seagrass meadows face a lot of difficulties, especially as floods and heavy rain affect the east coast of the country and pollute the waterways. Understanding how this newly discovered grassland achieves the desired resilience could play an important role in protecting and sustaining ecosystems.
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