Did you have some bad shrimp or are you just happy to see me

Did you have some bad shrimp or are you just happy to see me



Ostracods vomit bioluminescent mucus to attract mates.

By Sarah Kaplan Washington Post June 25, 2016

In the dense darkness of midnight in the Caribbean, the displays look like strings of tiny glowing pearls. Some light up in zigzag patterns; others appear in a horizontal trail or streak upward toward the surface. The luminous beads linger for a few seconds, then fade to black, like bashful underwater ghosts.

But Emily Ellis, an evolutionary biologist who studies these displays, knows what they really are: blobs of bioluminescent mucus vomited up by crustaceans called ostracods. Males use the vomit to impress potential mates.

‘‘It sounds nasty,’’ she acknowledged, laughing. ‘‘But I guess the females really like it.’’

And the outcome of this incandescent display has ramifications far beyond the ostrocods involved. In a study published this week in the journal Current Biology, Ellis and fellow evolutionary biologist Todd Oakley report that bioluminescent courting rituals appear to promote diversity, increasing the number of species within groups that perform them.

‘‘This is some of the clearest evidence to date of a sexually selected trait’’ — a trait that’s dictated by whom creatures want to mate with, as opposed to environmental pressures such as predation or climate — ‘‘leading to changes in species diversity number,’’ Oakley said.

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