Question

The other main group of molluscs are the gastropods - the snails and slugs. Watch the following video of a cone snail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcBKH7s4SVQ In addition to being pretty cool, cone snails offer significant promise for the development of new medicines. Each species of cone snail produces a unique combination of peptides (short little proteins) that they use to capture their prey. While most venomous animals produce only a handful of different peptides, each species of cone snail produces as many as 100 to 200 different ones. Combined with an estimated 700 species of cone snails, that's 70,000 - 140,000 unique peptides produced by this group of snails! To date some of these peptides have been used to develop new classes of drugs. For example, opiates used to treat pain can be addictive and people can build up tolerance to them requiring stronger and stronger doses Peptides derived from cone-snail, on the other hand, are very effective at reducing pain, are not addictive, and do not cause increasing tolerance Given this information, why do you think the protection of biodiversity might be so important? Animals are defined, in part, by their heterotrophic mode of nutrition by ingestion. Read the article here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/leaf-like-sea-slug-feeds-on-light-1.944516 and answer the following questions: What type of invertebrate is the sea slug? What is so unusual about this species' mode of nutrition?

Answer 1

3)

Biodiversity gives importance to every species in the ecosystem no matter how small it is. More species diversity indicates that more life forms are able to sustain naturally. It is necessary for a certain species to live in a certain area. For example, the deer living in a specific area will graze on the vegetation which triggered the plants to grow and trees could grow. Trees provided shelter and food to several other animals. If there are more plants, animals and trees in the area, the soil there will improve and become less exposed to erosions, flooding and droughts.

So, biodiversity is important to regulate stable ecosystems. Ecosystem constitutes various life forms that live together in a balanced and stable format. If there are any abrupt changes in the environment, the community might get damaged or destroyed. Serious and severe effects result from the destruction of ecosystem that can lead to destruction of valuable species, erosion and alterations in climate.

4)

a) Sea slug is a Mollusc.

b) This sea slug is an animal and an invertebrate. In spite of being an animal, it eats algae and transfers chloroplasts from algae into its cells. These ingested chloroplasts will stay in their cells for about 9 to 10 months or approximately the entire lifetime of the animal. The entire energy needed for the animal is provided by the photosynthesis happening in the chloroplasts. The genes that are involved in the photosynthetic process are also found to be transferred along with the chloroplasts.