Antarctic krill keep revealing new superpowers.
Euphausia superba, the Southern Ocean’s ubiquitous krill species, sequester large amounts of carbon via their profuse poop. Now, scientists have identified another way in which the swimming crustaceans may modulate Earth’s climate: by sending their leftovers down to the bottom of the sea.
Laboratory observations of krills’ filter feeding behavior suggest that when food is plentiful — such as during a phytoplankton bloom — ejected “boluses” of leftover food also sequester carbon, researchers report October 7 in Biology Letters.
#newsletter-helper svg { width: auto; fill: #f1563e; } #newsletter-helper { display: flex; border-top: 1px solid gray; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 20px;