What are these salps that have taken over some Spanish beaches?

Recently, the first reports of Portuguese warships appeared on the beaches of Cantabria. So when bathers saw small animals transparent and gelatinous roaming its waters in large numbers, panicked. What if it was a young Portuguese man-of-war or some kind of dangerous jellyfish? It didn’t take long for experts to head to the affected beaches to observe this new plague, which turned out to be salpscompletely harmless animals that are more closely related to humans than to jellyfish.

Yes, yes, although they are transparent, gelatinous and live in the sea, they are closer to us. This is one of the wonders of taxonomy. Later we will see why this connection with our species is due. But it is also important to know a little more about them and understand why they suddenly flooded the waters of Cantabria.

The truth is that salps are found almost all over the planet. However, it seems that the concentration on these Spanish beaches is due to changing of the climate and warming waters. At this point, this should no longer surprise us.

What do we know about salps?

Salps are transparent, gelatinous-looking, barrel-shaped invertebrates. They vary in size from 1 to 20 centimetersHowever, they can be combined into groups to form rows of several meters.

This happens during asexual phase of the reproductive cycleAt the beginning of the sexual phase they are released and multiply so that each salp in the row now contains another one.

They are filter feeders.feeding on plankton. This gives them a very important role in marine ecology, as they also contribute to the proper functioning of Carbon cycle. Many of the plankton components they feed on are photosynthetic species, which use carbon dioxide to produce their components. In short, they are carbon fixers. If salps feed on them, both their feces and the dead salps themselves contain carbon that is converted into sea ​​bottom. There it can be absorbed by other creatures or directly stored, so that its level in the Earth’s atmosphere decreases, which helps to avoid global warming. We already see that salps are not only harmless, but also beneficial to us.

What does it mean that they are more related to humans than jellyfish?

Both salps and jellyfish and humans belong to the animal kingdom. However, if we continue to go down the taxonomic classification, we will find something curious about this type. Jellyfish belong to edge Cnidaria, consists of aquatic animals with a very simple structure.

On the other hand, both salps and humans belong to the type chordates. They are characterized by their presence at the embryonic stage chord and neural tube. In humans, these two structures continue to develop until they give rise to the nervous system and spine as we know them. In contrast, in salps, which belong to the subtype tunicatesThese structures are lost as we grow older. That’s why our embryos and early stages of salp development are so similar. It’s the changes that happen after that that make us so different.

In any case, there is nothing to fear from this plague of salps on Cantabrian beaches. Observation will be necessary, but more for your safety than for the safety of bathers. They do not itch and are not dangerous. We are likely to we are more dangerous for them. So if we see them, the best thing we can do is not to bother them. We can consider them as very, very distant relatives that we are obliged to respect (and no, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect jellyfish, too).