Scientists have discovered the world’s largest plant off the Australia coast — a seagrass meadow that has grown by repeatedly cloning itself. Genetic analysis has revealed that the underwater fields of waving green seagrass are a single organism covering 70 square miles (180 square kilometers) through making copies of itself over 4,500 years. This November 2018 photo provided by The University Of Western Australia shows part of the Posidonia australis seagrass meadow in Australia's Shark Bay. (Sahira Bell/The University Of Western Australia via AP) The research was published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Scientists confirmed that the meadow was a single organism by sampling and comparing the DNA of seagrass shoots across the bed, wrote Jane Edgeloe, a study ...
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Scientists are now racing to track what’s left of the underwater seagrass plateaus Hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, ribbon-like fronds flutter in the ocean currents sweeping across an underwater mountain plateau the size of Switzerland. A remote-powered camera glides through the sunlit, turquoise waters of this corner of the western Indian Ocean, capturing rare footage of what scientists believe is the world’s largest seagrass meadow. A shoal of fish swim over seagrass on the Saya de Malha Bank within the Mascarene plateau, Mauritius March 20, 2021. Tommy Trenchard/Greenpeace/Handout via REUTERS Human activity is helping destroy the equivalent of a soccer field of these seagrasses every 30 minutes around the world, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP). A...
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