(Newser)
– Never underestimate barnacles. According to researchers in Australia, they could only help track people lost at sea. Species of the Traieu anserifera the genus of goose barnacles is among the most common found in bioincrustation, an elegant word for the accumulation of organisms on a surface, and “play an important role in bioculture communities as fundamental species “, according to a study in Marine Biology. For more information, researchers at the University of New South Wales monitored how barnacles and other creatures adhered to floating, fixed objects for six months. He Release, which only adhere to floating objects, showed an average daily growth rate of 1.055 mm per day, which was higher than the fastest daily growth rate observed during previous research in the 1940s and a higher daily growth rate. fast about 1.45 mm per day, per day. a release. This is not as unimportant as it may seem.
If a fisherman disappears and the remains of his boat are washed ashore, “we can measure and count the Release (in addition to counting those other amphipods if any) to give a minimal estimate of the time they drifted from this waste, “explains lead author Thomas Mesaglio. In addition, experts can” reconstruct the temperature of the sea surface they experienced while attached to the waste “by conducting an isotopic analysis of barnacle shells. Researchers say it could be used to trace possible drift patterns. All of this is hypothetical. However, co-author Iain Suthers says calculations suggest that the 36 mm Release found in the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines’ missing flight MH370 that reached the coast off the coast of Madagascar 16 months after the plane’s disappearance in 2014 “were much younger than before” and probably left form “almost near the scene of the accident.” (Read more discovery stories.)