![]() ![]() elegans so valuable for developmental studies: physiological simplicity, a fast breeding cycle and a precise, highly patterned development plan. ![]() Water bears offer the same virtues that have made C. That role is now held most prominently by the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, the object of study for the many distinguished researchers following in the trail opened by Nobel Prize laureate Sydney Brenner, who began working on C. On seeing them, most people say tardigrades are the cutest invertebrate.Īt one time water bears were candidates to be the main model organism for studies of development. Some call them moss piglets and they have also been compared to pygmy rhinoceroses and armadillos. They are commonly known as water bears, a name derived from their resemblance to eight-legged pandas. Terrestrial species live in the interior dampness of moss, lichen, leaf litter and soil other species are found in fresh or salt water. These organisms survive extreme conditions-of temperature, pressure and radiation-to a degree unparalleled in nature. In their cryptobiotic state, desiccated or frozen, they are astonishingly durable. Their moist realm is transient, and in response tardigrades have evolved an array of strategies based on induced cryptobiosis-the suspension of metabolism by drying or freezing. In the microenvironments made by water that coheres in the fissures of mosses and lichens due to surface tension, tardigrades thrive by feeding on smaller organisms and by sucking contents out of plant cells. In actuality, tardigrades are translucent and display a variety of colors-white, green, orange, red. The technology gives a false sense of the “hide” of this tardigrade. EMs are produced by layering a molecular film of metal on a sample. In this colorized electron micrograph (EM), which has the feel of a museum diorama, a tardigrade emerges from under a moss leaf to hunt for food or a companion.
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