{"id":9937,"date":"2026-01-18T19:28:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T18:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/?p=9937"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:28:07","slug":"a-la-recherche-de-lorigine-des-hydres-deau-douce-antillaises-retour-mission-au-senegal-20205","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/a-la-recherche-de-lorigine-des-hydres-deau-douce-antillaises-retour-mission-au-senegal-20205\/","title":{"rendered":"In search of the origin of West Indian freshwater hydra - Return from mission in Senegal - 2025."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2019, as part of a 2-month mission funded by the IRD<\/strong>, Herv\u00e9 Macarie<\/a> (team HEALTH<\/a>-IMBE), accompanied by Professor Daniel Martinez<\/a> (Pomona College, USA), has shown for the first time that freshwater hydra<\/strong>, small cnidarians, were ubiquitous in Guadeloupe and Martinique<\/strong><\/a>, and found in 50 % water points<\/strong> surveyed (rivers and ponds). This discovery was unexpected, as these organisms, which are adapted to freshwater, do not naturally cross saltwater bodies.<\/p>

This result reinforced the relevance of using the\u2019hydra as a model for studying the impact of chlordecone<\/strong><\/a>, an insecticide responsible for an environmental and health crisis in the French West Indies. Genomic analysis of hydra from the French West Indies revealed two distinct groups<\/strong> one close to the American hydras and a second that could be linked to the African hydra populations, the hypothesis being that this second group could have been the first. introduced by man from Africa<\/strong> during the slave trade.\u00a0<\/p>

To test this hypothesis, a AOI funding IMBE mission to the south<\/strong> gave Herv\u00e9 Macarie the opportunity to visit the Senegal in 2025<\/strong>, accompanied by\u2019Herv\u00e9 Jourdan<\/a> (team POPCO<\/a>) and Mamadou Sylla Barry. On 2560 km of prospecting<\/strong>, They explored the Senegal River, Lake Guiers, the Gambia River and several waterholes around Dakar. No hydra was found<\/strong>, This suggests a very low density in the environments surveyed, with unfavourable factors such as brackish or excessively warm water.<\/p>

This research paves the way for a better understanding of biogeography and history of West Indian hydras<\/strong>, and their role in island ecosystems.<\/p>

Next step:<\/strong> to continue our exploration in Africa, to lift the veil on the little-known history of these freshwater micro-inhabitants. We'll keep you posted on progress!<\/strong><\/p>

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En 2019, dans le cadre d\u2019une mission de 2 mois financ\u00e9e par l\u2019IRD, Herv\u00e9 Macarie (\u00e9quipe SANTES-IMBE), accompagn\u00e9 du Professeur Daniel Martinez (Pomona College, USA), a montr\u00e9 pour la premi\u00e8re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":9945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mission-de-terrain"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9937"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9949,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9937\/revisions\/9949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imbe.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}