If you enjoy gazing at colorful coral, or making sandcastles on the beach, you have the strength of parrotfish teeth to thank.It's hard to decide which of the colorful parrotfish's many unique characteristics is most remarkable. In areas where overfishing has wiped out parrotfish populations, coral reef ecosystems are not as productive, and cannot sustain as much diverse life. When the fish eat the algae that compete with the coral polyps, the coral is able to grow and is more resilient in the face of local stressors (like pollution or warming). This cleaning function is important to the reefs' ecosystem survival. While parrotfish eat a lot of coral, they also eat the algae that grow on top of coral reefs.
Gilbert does this, parrotfish continue to go about their days, almost constantly grazing on coral. Next on her list: a closer look at human teeth and bones using the tool. Gilbert is much more interested in the research possibilities of the PIC mapping technology and what new structures she may be able to find. The specific structure is one that could be mimicked to create abrasion-resistant moving parts, but Dr. The structure of parrotfish teeth was one the researchers had never seen before, with the crystals oriented in interwoven bundles, which form a chainmail pattern. "It's totally exciting fantastically beautiful," she said. Gilbert and her team found this structure, they were surprised. It color-codes the measured orientations of the crystals, and creates a picture that looks a little bit like abstract art, but can tell the scientists a lot about the structure of the teeth. This technology essentially takes pictures of the crystals, which are ordered stacks of atoms. The team developed a tool in order to see the orientation of the crystals in the fluorapatite, called PIC mapping, and the Advanced Light Source.
One square inch of parrotfish teeth can tolerate 530 tons of pressure-equivalent to the weight of about 88 elephants. The teeth can also withstand a lot of pressure. No biomineral in the world is stiffer than the tips of parrotfish teeth. Fluorapatite scores a five on the Mohs' hardness scale, making their teeth harder than copper, silver and gold. Parrotfish teeth are made of a material called fluorapatite which contains calcium, fluorine, phosphorous and oxygen, and is the second-hardest biomineral in the world. What she and other researchers from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of Wisconsin - Madison found when they looked into the composition of parrotfish teeth was an intricate crystal structure. No one had measured just how hard, stiff, and tough these teeth are, so Dr. "I'm a scuba diver, and I've always heard how loud they are underwater, when they crunch coral" she said. Pupa Gilbert has known she wanted to study parrotfish teeth for a while.
This isn't a problem for the parrotfish, though, because another row of teeth is right behind the first, just waiting to chow down on coral.īiophysicist Dr. When the teeth wear out, they fall to the ocean floor. Each parrotfish has roughly 1,000 teeth, lined up in 15 rows and cemented together to form the beak structure, which they use for biting into the coral.
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