Ford had his auto, Winchester his rifle, Boeing loved his jets. Tom Iliffe will gladly settle for his cave crustaceans.
For a scientific researcher, discovering any type of new species is a big thrill, and an even bigger one if the new creature is named after you. Texas A&M University, one of a few select schools that carries the rare designation of being a land grant, sea grant and space grant institution, has several researchers who have identified new marine species and thus contributed greatly to advancing our knowledge of the biodiversity of ocean life.
Iliffe, a marine biology professor at Texas A&M-Galveston, is known internationally as one of the world’s foremost cave divers, and he is an expert on “blue holes,” caves so named because from an aerial view, they appear as a blue circle dotting the ocean. The Bahamas are ground zero for blue holes, and there are believed to be more than 1,000 of them in the area.
Iliffe has explored at least 1,500 underwater caves, more than anyone in the world, and he has done so from the Italian coast to Australia and just about everywhere in between. Along the way, he has discovered more than 300 new marine species and had numerous ones named after him.
Iliffe discovered his first cave species in 1979 in Bermuda caves. Although his initial interest in caves was purely recreational, his first glimpse of the crystal clear blue cave waters and the strange white, eyeless animals living in their depths was enough to prompt him to change his career path.
Cave diving is a critical component of Iliffe’s research as most of the caves that he studies contain a layer of fresh or brackish water at the surface with fully marine water occurring at depth. It is only in this deep saltwater — a lightless, food and oxygen-poor environment accessible only by diving — that Iliffe finds his unique life forms.
“When you explore a cave that probably no one has ever entered and you find a type of marine life that no one knew existed, it is quite an exciting time,” he explains.
Iliffe discovered many new species, such as a type of worm he found in a volcanic, lava tube cave in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The research team members he led agreed they should name the eyeless and depigmented worm after Iliffe, so thus was identified Sphaerosyllis iliffei.
He also was instrumental in discovering a number of new species of Remipedia, initially thought to be among the most primitive of all types of crustaceans. Resembling a centipede, remipedes will never win any beauty contests: they have hollow-tip fangs that inject a venom potent enough to kill small shrimp or other marine life.
Remipedia are also hermaphrodites — they contain both male and female reproductive organs in the same individual. Recent investigations of remipede DNA have found that they are the closest living crustacean relatives of the hexapods — eight-legged animals including the insects.
There are half a dozen other species named for him including a type of shrimp, Typhlata iliffei, found in Bermuda caves, and don’t forget the Iliffeocia illifei, a type of crustacean that resembles a clam and is found in locations including the Galapagos Islands from the Pacific and Bermuda in the Atlantic.
“I’ve been lucky enough to discover many caves that no one has ever entered before,” Iliffe adds. “It’s like going to the far side of the moon. You turn a corner and you realize you are seeing things no one has ever seen, and these include strange, alien creatures. It never ceases to be an amazing experience.”