Effects of the exposure of extreme environments on the life-time and breeding ability of tardigrade

Wadachi, Hiroki*; Kunieda, Takekazu*; Sakashita, Tetsuya; Kawai, Kiyoshi*; Iwata, Kenichi*; Nakahara, Yuichi*; Hamada, Nobuyuki*; Koseki, Shigenobu*; Yamamoto, Kazutaka*; Kobayashi, Yasuhiko; Okuda, Takashi*

We studied the effects of the exposure of extreme environments on life-time and breeding ability of tardigrade to reveal the possibility of multi-cellular organism existences in the outerspace. A life time of animals is the shortest in the heavy-ion exposed animals than any other stressors. There were significant decrease in the number of egg-laying and hatching rate between irradiated and non-irradiated animals. However, we found the next generation in all experimental conditions. Our findings suggest that tardigrades exposed to even any extreme environments could have a descendant.