Study shows barnacles are “getting bent” to evade invasive snails
If an enemy you were previously safe from turned up in your neighborhood, what would you do? That's a problem currently being faced by barnacles in northern Mexico, which are growing sideways to thwart invasive predatory snails.Ordinarily, the Tetraclita rubescens barnacle has a roughly symmetrical conical shell that resembles a miniature volcano, just like most other barnacles.However, after reviewing over 1,000 barnacle photos taken at 30 sites along the Pacific coast of North America (between 2017 and 2022), scientists…