The baby Hawaiian bobtail squid were raised at the University of Hawaii's Kewalo Marine Laboratory and were blasted into space earlier this month on a SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station.  Researcher Jamie Foster, who completed her doctorate at the University of Hawaii, is studying how spaceflight affects the squid in hopes of bolstering human health during long space missions, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.

The squid have a symbiotic relationship with natural bacteria that help regulate their bioluminescence.  When astronauts are in low gravity their body's relationship with microbes changes, said University of Hawaii professor Margaret McFall-Ngai, whom Foster studied under in the 1990s.

"We have found that the symbiosis of humans with their microbes is perturbed in microgravity, and Jamie has shown that is true in squid," said McFall-Ngai. "And, because it's a simple system, she can get to the bottom of what’s going wrong."  Foster is now a Florida professor and principal investigator for a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programme that researches how microgravity affects the interactions between animals and microbes.