Annual Viral Expression in a Sea Slug Population: Life Cycle Control and Symbiotic Chloroplast Maintenance.

bogleech:

Maybe some of you have heard about that awesome sea slug that contains algae chloroplasts and can actually photosynthesize like a plant, right?

Well, it also seems that its ability to utilize chloroplasts was a mutation induced by a virus.

The virus continues to operate in the maintenance of this process.

100% of the species is infected.

……And after they lay their eggs, 100% of them are killed by that virus. Not by “aging” or some other natural life cycle trigger. They just stop being necessary now that they’ve made a new generation and the virus re-activates what were probably its original deadly symptoms when the two first met millions of years ago.

Annual Viral Expression in a Sea Slug Population: Life Cycle Control and Symbiotic Chloroplast Maintenance.