Giant Antarctic Sea Spiders Weather Warming by Getting Holey

National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
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Arlington, VA 22230

Posted May 6, 2019

Image: Caitlin Shishido

Scientists have wondered for decades why marine animals that live in the polar oceans and the deep sea grow so large there, but nowhere else. And whether their size may make them more vulnerable to warming of polar waters.

The prevailing theory—the 'oxygen-temperature hypothesis'—holds that animals living in extreme cold can grow to giant sizes because their metabolisms are very slow.

Caitlin Shishido, a doctoral student in zoology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Amy Moran, a university researcher, and colleagues at the University of Montana, chose to test that hypothesis with Antarctic sea spiders, marine relatives of land spiders that breathe through their legs.

In a study, published last month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, their initial findings indicate that the answer to how the creatures are able to grow so large appears to lie in the porous nature of the crab’s legs and the fact that as the animals grow larger their legs become more porous, allowing them to absorb more oxygen.

Read more in a university news release here: http://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=9894