A sea snake that behaves like plankton? Dr. Harvey Lillywhite has just published this work in Biology Letters. The yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamis platurus) spends much of its time at or near the ocean surface and ranges from the southeastern coast of Africa across the Indo-Pacific to the western shores of Central America. This colorful, venomous snake travels by drifting on oceanic currents, just as microscopic plankton do. Surface currents enable this species to disperse well beyond its center of origin in southern Asia and to spread across 2/3 of the Earth’s circumference. Drifting on oceanic currents is the likely explanation why this is the only species of sea snake to have reached the Americas– including California. The trans-oceanic distribution of this sea snake means that it may be the most abundant species of tetrapod vertebrate. Read more here.
