[HN Gopher] Four Hidden Species of Portuguese Man-O'-War
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Four Hidden Species of Portuguese Man-O'-War
Author : akkartik
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-12-14 19:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (crookedtimber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (crookedtimber.org)
| nugzbunny wrote:
| I've been stung by one of these on my foot while surfing. It was
| painful. Painful enough for me to get out of the water and call
| it a day.
|
| The man in the photograph with his limb covered must have had an
| awful day.
| pvaldes wrote:
| More than a bad day. We should assume that those marks left
| permanent scars.
|
| I had spotted visible marks on a leg, five years after a mild
| encounter.
| smoyer wrote:
| I was stung on the stomach and side ... It bent me over in the
| water then somehow I crawled up the beach and laid down.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I was stung 25 years ago by a box jellyfish.
|
| The suicidal tendacies petered out after only 24 months.
| blacklion wrote:
| Excuse me of my question is unpleasant for you, but why do
| you have suicidal tendencies for 2 years? Is it objective
| property of box jellyfish venom (like some medicine can
| induce suicidal thoughts) or it is because it was painful for
| whole 24 months?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Box jellyfishes are on a different level. Jellyfish on
| steroids level of sting.
| hanszarkov wrote:
| Fascinating read. Never knew about these 'aggregate' organisms.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I personally prefer the pet version called little sail (Velella
| velella). Supercute floating city and harmless to touch (I had
| put them in my hands). Its predator, the blue sea dragon
| definitely can sting. It eats blue bottles and store the poison
| cells as weapon, so if you don't look out, you could get more
| than you expect.
|
| Those blue dragons and the deep sea Siphonophores (with cool
| floaters shaped like cut crystal spaceships) are among the most
| alien things in this planet. I don't even want to imagine how
| much more poisonous than blue bottles could be those deep sea
| species in its habitat.
|
| I bet that NASA researchers salivate about the idea of how much
| similar things could live in Europe's ocean waiting to be
| discovered.
| oersted wrote:
| We get lots of these in the Bay of Biscay for some reason. Not
| really warm waters, it's the North-is Atlantic. I guess it's mild
| in summer, that's when we get them.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Probably the prevailing winds blow them in, and they never sink
| enough to catch the currents back out.
| lisper wrote:
| > a single Portuguese man-o'-war is composed of four or five
| separate animals.
|
| Sorry, no. Just because they are not physically connected to each
| other doesn't make them separate animals. They are a single
| animal made of parts that happen not to be physically attached to
| one another. This is not uncommon in nature. Colony insects like
| ants and bees and termites are even more extreme examples of
| this. An individual ant (or bee or termite) is not an organism
| any more than (say) your spleen is. Most ants (or bees or
| termites) are sterile. They cannot reproduce. It is the _colony_
| that is the organism, not the individual insect.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I'm no expert but going off of Wikipedia, I don't see the issue
| with the passage you quoted?
|
| The nomenclature for colonial species seems to be that even if
| the colony can be a single organism, the parts are still
| referred to as animals (e.g. "A zooid is a single animal that
| is part of a colonial animal.")
|
| But anyway, is there even a strict definition for what an
| organism is?
| lisper wrote:
| > is there even a strict definition for what an organism is?
|
| I don't know how "strict" it is but the dictionary definition
| of "organism" is "an individual form of life, such as a
| bacterium, protist, fungus, plant, or animal, composed of a
| single cell or a complex of cells in which organelles or
| organs work together to carry out the various processes of
| life." There is no requirement that it consist of parts that
| are physically connected to one another.
| bmitc wrote:
| It's a bit contrarian to make up your own taxonomy. No one
| calls a colony of ants, humans, bees, etc. a single animal. And
| in all of your examples, the separate animals are nearly clones
| of each other, anatomically speaking. That isn't the case with
| the man o'war.
| lisper wrote:
| > That isn't the case with the man o'war.
|
| Yes, it is:
|
| "How this happens: when a Physalia egg is fertilized, it
| starts dividing, like every other fertilized egg. But pretty
| quickly it breaks apart into two and then more distinct
| embryos -- genetically identical, but physically separate."
| bmitc wrote:
| I said _anatomically_.
| lisper wrote:
| Sorry, I saw "clone" and thought you were talking about
| genetics. But you're wrong about anatomy too. There is a
| lot of variation in morphology between different insect
| types in a colony.
|
| https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Caste_Terminology
| KineticLensman wrote:
| >> There is a lot of variation in morphology between
| different insect types in a colony
|
| Bees in a hive change their role (e.g. nursery, house-
| keeping, defence, food gathering) depending on their age
| but all these roles have the same morphology, unlike
| castes in ants.
| lisper wrote:
| Queens look different. But your point is well taken. I
| guess I should stick to ants and termites as examples.
| pedalpete wrote:
| These are called blue bottles in Australia, and we get them
| fairly regularly where I live (Bondi) but also up and down the
| east coast. I'm sure they are on the west coast as well.
|
| I had thought they were 3 distinct parts, not 5. It is a
| fascinating bit of symbiosis.
| richardw wrote:
| Googling produces:
|
| " Bluebottles are similar to the Portuguese Man o' War
| (Physalia physalis) in appearance and behavior, but are smaller
| and less venomous. And unlike the Portuguese Man o' War,
| bluebottle stings have yet to cause any human fatalities."
|
| https://oceana.org/marine-
| life/bluebottle/#:~:text=Bluebottl....
|
| But the bluebottle seems to be called the "pacific man-o 'war",
| thus some potential for mixing them up, or adding another
| subspecies, etc. Not an expert.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Its now widely accepted there is only one species:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42421559
|
| I grew up in New Zealand thinking blue bottles and man-o-
| war's were different.
| richardw wrote:
| Ah, missed that. New info, thank you!
| pvaldes wrote:
| My guess is that they are confusing blue bottles with blue
| bottons (Porpita porpita). The floating ones comprise
| Physalia, Velella and Porpita. Is an oceanic trilogy.
| pedalpete wrote:
| No, definitely not blue bottons, bluebottles have the
| distinctive "sail" that sits above the water.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Australian here.
|
| In my youth, we would often take long'ish car rides to get to
| our favorite beaches. One of them - Bunker Bay Beach, right on
| the Western-most tip of the country, was a particular treasure
| as - at the time in the late 70's/early 80's, it was somewhat
| difficult to get to, involving a bit of bush bashing and
| whatnot.
|
| 44C, a stinking hot day, and we'd been driving for what seemed
| like hours to get there, my sister and I basically boiling in
| the back seat while Dad navigated the dusty road.
|
| We arrive at this beautiful beach (it's truly a gem) and I open
| the car door and run like mad to get into the pristine, blue
| waters, levitating on the baking hot sand, ignoring all and
| sundry in my rush to cool down. My Dad yelling something in the
| background did not deter me, nor did the pleas of my sister.
|
| I dove into the waves and was instantly greeted with a hard,
| rushing white noise of pain. It was literally like someone had
| glued an untuned TV set to my eyeballs, just white noise and
| pain like nothing I'd ever experienced.
|
| I blacked out. The next thing I remember is being rolled around
| in the scorching sand, my torso covered in blue bottle
| tentacles, the scars of which I still bear, almost 50 years
| later. My Dad, screaming at me to breathe, my sister yelling at
| me to read the signs: "BLUE BOTTLE SWARM IN SEASON: NO
| SWIMMING!"
|
| What had been a joy turned into misery, as we now needed to get
| back in the car and battle the dust to take me to a hospital
| and make sure Dad and I were okay - he'd been covered in the
| tentacles too, as he ripped them off my skin and rolled me in
| the sand.
|
| Subsequent visits to that beautiful spot were always tempered
| with at least 10 or 15 minutes of observation and surveillance,
| and for sure I never ran like that to get into those beautiful
| waters quite the same again .. and I subsequently learned that
| Bunker Bay Beach was kind of the final destination for every
| bluebottle that ever got caught in the winds along the Western
| Australian coastline, sort of a catchment of misery on one of
| the most beautiful beaches in the world ..
| jajko wrote:
| You sort of summarized my experience with Australia as an
| European - beautiful to stunning places all around the coast,
| and every single one with massive sign of all the deadly
| creatures and other dangers that can kill ya in a minute (ie
| Irukandji). Didn't even take a proper swim there in the
| ocean, just waist deep on more remote beaches.
|
| Then I saw on Fraser island on some lookout above the shore
| sea literally swarming with sharks. From time to time some
| giant stingray swam through them, but mostly sharks. Like
| some caricature movie with Bond and piranhas.
|
| Oh boy do I enjoy swimming in Mediterranean and just not
| giving a fuck about anything, anytime, day or night, any
| season, even butt naked. In decades of going there I got 1
| sting from small jellyfish on the shoulder, that's it.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| [delayed]
| pedalpete wrote:
| Your writing style is excellent! So well captured. I didn't
| realize the stings could scar like that.
|
| I got caught in a blue bottle swarm about 10 years ago off
| Mark's Park in Bondi, but the marks only lasted a week.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| In South Florida these would be so abundant some years that they
| would wash ashore and dry up in the sun, the roasted tentacles
| forming a continuous brown strip for miles, mixed with smaller
| amounts of seaweed at the high tide point.
|
| Punctuated every few feet by the intact blue balloons, which were
| fun for kids to step on and pop harmlessly once the dead
| tentacles had decayed like that.
|
| Even then there were usually only a few floating around when you
| were out swimming in the Atlantic. It was not too difficult to
| avoid them, but occasionally you could get a small string of
| welts anyway, more likely from detached tentacles than direct
| contact with one.
|
| But if the ocean got rough when there were significant numbers
| close to shore, the tentacles would break up into a million
| pieces and you couldn't swim without tiny little stings like pin-
| pricks all the time.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > And, lo and behold: they found that there were actually five
| species of Physalia
|
| I am not sure there are different species, Wikipedia says one
| species and mentioned at some point some thought there might be
| more than one. [1]
|
| An article published in New Zealand Geographic in 2002 [2]
| mentions multiple species a number of times but also states that
| Marine Biologist and taxonomist Emeritus Professor Philip Roy
| Pugh (RIP 2021) does not agree:
|
| > Phil Pugh, an English expert on world siphonophore jellies (of
| which the bluebottle is one), thinks not. He believes there is
| only a single worldwide bluebottle species, Physalia physalis,
| but that it varies greatly in size.
|
| Philip Pugh described a quarter of all known siphonophores [3],
| more than any one person. So he probably knew what he was talking
| about.
|
| There is a tendency in certain areas of biology to attribute
| extremely minor regional variation to new species.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war
|
| [2] https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/summertime-blues/
|
| [3] https://noc.ac.uk/news/memoriam-philip-roy-pugh
| ivanbakel wrote:
| > There is a tendency in certain areas of biology to attribute
| extremely minor regional variation to new species.
|
| The article describes pretty much the opposite of this, though
| - the species found have no regional variation, and even
| overlap majorly.
|
| If the scientists involved in the paper cited by TFA have
| really found a large level of genetic diversity, I don't see
| the point of arguing against their definition of species. It's
| not a two way street, but sufficient genetic separation is
| enough to establish separate species, even ones
| indistinguishable to human eyes.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| Sufficient genetic separation in the presence of range
| overlap. Otherwise you're just arguing about whether things
| are geographical races vs species, which can only be
| subjective. (Mayr and Haffer had it right)
| Perenti wrote:
| I feel doubtful about this article. They claim that the man-o-war
| is the largest colonial organisms, but there are HUGE
| siphonophores that are 100m long.
| jdlshore wrote:
| It says there are larger ones, but this is the largest that has
| differentiated roles.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm reminded of moss sex which is sort of like if your sperm or
| eggs went off and got a job an an apartment and a social life and
| only bothered to spin up a full-blown human being for sexy times.
| Both forms being multicellular and alternating (see:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations).
|
| I guess that's a bit like the caterpillar and the butterfly,
| though I think they have the same ploidy.
|
| Except for Portuguese Man-O-War, it's not an alternation but the
| multiple forms all existing at once. Still pretty weird but I
| think there's actually more precedent for this kind of thing than
| initially comes to mind: switch/case blocks really high up in the
| genomic call stack.
|
| I'm a bit disappointed to learn that these "separate" animals are
| genetically identical. When I first heard this described I
| thought it was like lichen where cells from multiple kingdoms are
| each reproducing in tandem and forming structures that neither
| could make happen independently: Like if your gut biome moved out
| and figured out how to bootstrap enough of a body to get its own
| job and apartment and...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> But they don't have sex in any way we'd recognize.
|
| Small blessings.
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