This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Like all other snakes, sea snakes shed their skin as they grow. But because they live near the surface of the open ocean, they don't have the benefit of removing their old skin by slithering against a hard surface.
Instead, they wriggle into a pretzel and use the friction generated by their scales to get the job done. That's why, according to marine herpetologist Joseph Pfaller, "When you find a sea snake's skin, it's usually in a knot." In 2012, Pfaller discovered that sea snakes might shed a lot more than just their skin when it's time to molt. He'd just started his doctoral degree at the University of Florida and joined a research expedition led by UF professor Harvey Lillywhite to study yellow-bellied sea snakes (Hydrophis platurus) off the coast of Costa Rica.
"On almost the first snake we caught, this little crab fell off." Most herpetologists, he said, might have been too excited about the snake to notice the crab. But Pfaller had previously studied sea turtles and the many organisms that live on them, called epibionts. On the long list of sea turtle epibionts are crabs in the genus Planes, which live in the protective space between the turtle's tail and the posterior portion of its shell.
The study "Planes on a Snake? On the Identities of Crab Larvae Rafting on Sea Snakes" is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Pfaller wondered whether the crab he'd noticed had been a resident on the snake before it was evicted.
But barnacles and other stationary animals were basically the only things known to live on sea snakes. None other than Charles Darwin documented this when he wrote about an unknown type of barnacle a colleague sent him that had been found growing on a sea snake near Borneo. In 1975, scientists reported finding two types of normally stationary, tube-dwelling worms attached to a Dubois' sea snake (Aipysurus duboisii).
The snake also carried a moss animal, a type of sedentary colonial organism, all of which were unusual enough that the scientists suggested there was something odd about the snake's behavior that had attracted such unlikely freeloaders. No reports of crabs or anything else with legs had ever been reported hanging out on a sea snake. But the more sea snakes Pfaller collected, 371 in all, the more crabs and other hitchhikers he found.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
