St. Louis Herpetological Society
The First Solar-Powered Vertebrate (Spotted Salamanders)
Inside
-I/I 8/13 by Michael Marshall (New Scientist)
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Species: Ambystoma maculatum Habitat: Throughout the eastern USA and parts of southern Canada, leaving other salamanders green with envy
carbon dioxide and water into glucose and releases oxygen. Corals profit from this reaction by housing photosynthetic algae inside their shells. Spotted salamanders, too, are in a long-term relationship with photosynthetic algae. In 1888, biologist Henry Orr reported that their eggs often contain single-celled green algae called Oophita amblystomatis. The salamanders lay the eggs in pools of water,, and the algae colonise them within hours.
When you think about it, animals are weird. They ignore the abundant source of energy above their.... ' heads — the sun — and choose instead to invest vast amounts of energy in cumbersome equipment for By the 1940s, biologists strongly suspected it was a eating and digesting food. Why donjt they do what symbiotic relationship, beneficial to both the salaplants do, and get their energy straight from sunlight? mander embryos and the algae. The embryos release The short answer is that 'many do. Corals, are. am- : waste material, which the algae feed on. In turn the mals but have algae living in them that use sunlight to algae photosynthesise and release oxygen, which the make sugar. Many other animals, from sponges to sea embryos take in. Embryos that have more algae are slags, pull the same trick. One species of hornet can more likely to survive and. develop faster than emconvert sunlight into electricity. There are also sug- bryos with few or none. gestions that aphids can harness sunlight, although Then in 201 I the story gained an additional twist. A most biologists are unconvinced. close examination of the eggs revealed that some of But all these creatures are only distantly related to the algae were living within the embryos themselves, us. No backboned animal has been found that can and in some cases were actually inside embryoniccells. That suggested the embryos weren't just taking harness the sun — until now. It has long been suspected, and now there is hard evidence: the spotted oxygen from the algae: they might be taking glucose too. In other words, the afgae were acting as internal salamander is solar-powered. power stations, generating fuel for the salamanders. Plants make food using photosynthesis, absorbing light to power a chemical reaction that converts Continued on page 7