Image

Wing-footed Wonders

These tiny marine snails are called pteropods (“wing-foot”), or sometimes “sea butterflies,” because of their winglike swimming appendages. Pteropods are plankton that drift in the ocean, providing food for fish and whales. Like garden snails, their earthbound relatives, pteropods build calcium carbonate shells. But pteropods’ thin, fragile shells may be vulnerable to climate change. Rising levels of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning are entering the ocean and changing seawater’s chemistry, making it harder for pteropods to build shells. WHOI biologist Gareth Lawson is investigating how these beautiful creatures and key links in the food chain will be affected by ocean acidification.(Photo by Nancy Copley, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)