More than 400 million years ago, an insect-like animal called the springtail developed a small protein that prevents its cells from freezing. The globe was hot and humid. The sea was teeming with life. Early squids, eel-like fish, and sea worms hunted smaller animals. Above ground, however, nothi
Springtails are ancient. They first appeared more than 400 million years ago and probably share an ancestor with insects. Since then, however, they have evolved in a different direction than insects. And we now know they were the first animal to develop antifreeze proteins. Credit: Philippe Garcelon / Wikimedia Commons
Life in the Ordovician period looked very different from today. The land was barren and devoid of life, but the sea was teeming. Squids and sea anemones, which can be seen in the illustration, were particularly dominant. But springtails existed at this time as well. Credit: Fritz Geller-Grimm / Wikimedia CommonsOne of the animals that survived, however, was the springtail. A small, insect-like animal that had developed a special strategy to combat the cold.
The animal takes its name from its forked tail that it holds under its body like the bar of a catapult. The tail is also known as a furcula and the animal can release it quickly and leap up to 10 centimetres into the air if attacked by an enemy e.g. a spider.Tiny Animals in Petri dishes “The calculations show that springtails developed the antifreeze protein long before other animals. It didn’t happen for fish and insects until a million years later. Although plants and microorganisms, such as bacteria and single-celled algae, might have developed a similar mechanism even earlier,” he says.Martin Holmstrup and his colleagues at the Department of Ecoscience gathered the springtails for the lab themselves. They were gathered in Denmark, Iceland and Greenland.
Springtails come in many shapes and sizes – and there are more than 9,000 different species. And these are just the number of species we have discovered. The researchers estimate that there exist twice as many, if not more, species of springtail. Credit: Andy Murray / Wikimedia CommonsHowever, this special protein is not the only ability that makes it possible for springtails to survive in the harsh cold of the Arctic. They have another trick up their sleeve.
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