Uncategorized

Galveston Scientists Discover New Crustacean Species In Saltwater Caves

May 11, 2017

Close-up of remipede with 5mm line for measurement
Texas A&M at Galveston researchers were part of an international team that discovered a rare new crustacean species that lives only in saltwater caves.
By Keith Randall, Texas A&M University Marketing & Communications; and Bob Wright, Texas A&M University at Galveston Marketing & Communications

An international team consisting of scientists from Texas A&M University at Galveston, Denmark, Norway and Mexico have discovered a new species of remipede, a rare group of crustaceans exclusively inhabiting saltwater caves.  Crustaceans are a large and diverse group, including familiar animals such as crabs, shrimp, lobsters and barnacles.

While exploring a 6-mile long underwater cave on the Mexican island of Cozumel, Texas A&M Galveston marine biologists Dr. Tom Iliffe and Dr. Pete van Hengstum noticed shallow pools of saltwater on floor of the submerged cave passage.  Although this long cave primarily functions as an underground river, carrying freshwater to the Caribbean Sea, in a few places it is deep enough to intersect underlying saltwater.  In these saltwater pools, the scientists collected several small, inch long animals that have been identified as a new remipede species.

Remipedes are slender, multi-segmented crustaceans, lacking eyes and body pigmentation.  They continuously swim in an inverted position and superficially resemble a swimming centipede.  With their unique venom injecting fangs they have been observed to seize small shrimp as their prey.

“Quite unexpectedly, recent molecular genetic studies have found a close relationship between remipedes and insects suggesting that further studies of remipedes are critical to understanding the early evolution of insects and the movement of life out of the sea to land’, said Iliffe.  “With 28 species of remipedes identified in the past 36 years, discovery of a new species is a relatively rare event.”

Most remipedes are found in the Caribbean region.  The Bahama Islands appear to be the center of diversity with 20 species, but two species inhabit Canary Island caves on the opposite side of the Atlantic and one species occurs in a cave on the Indian Ocean coastline of Australia.

“This new species is the first remipede recorded from Cozumel,” said van Hengstum.  “Two related species inhabit caves along the adjacent mainland coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, while another comes from a seafloor cave off Belize.”

Together, these four species belong to the genus Xibalbanus, derived from the name for the underworld in ancient Mayan mythology.  The new species was named cozumelensis, referring to the island where it was discovered.

The body of Xibalbanus cozumelensis consists of up to 39 segments with each, except the last, having paddle-like limbs for swimming.  Sexes in remipedes are combined such that each individual simultaneously has male and female reproductive organs.  Mating has never been observed and little is known of their life history, with the exception of multiple larval stages observed for only one species.

Another unusual observation was the presence of suctorian ciliates.  These tiny, single-celled protozoans live on a stalk, attached to the outer surface of limbs and antennae of the new species. The suctorians likely benefiting from their attachment to a swimming host, but don’t harm it.

Geological evidence indicates that the Yucatan Peninsula has been separated from Cozumel by a deep-water channel for perhaps as long as 65 million years.  Such long-term geographic isolation might explain the existence of remipede species in both areas.

“Genetic similarities between Cozumel and mainland Yucatan remipedes hint that a more recent migration might have occurred, possibly through deep-water cave systems extending beneath the Cozumel channel,” says Iliffe.  “Underwater caves, along with the deep sea, are vast, unexplored frontiers for exploration and discovery.  Who knows what other strange lifeforms await discovery.”

Description of the new species was published in the European Journal of Taxonomy and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2017.316.  Additional information on Iliffe’s cave studies can be found on his website http://www.cavebiology.com.

###

Texas A&M University at Galveston is a special-purpose campus of Texas A&M University offering undergraduate and graduate programs under the name and authority of Texas A&M University. With a distinct identity in marine themes, Texas A&M Galveston is intimately connected to the land grant mission of Texas A&M University and, as such, its academic programs and research initiatives are linked to finding basic and applied solutions in maritime affairs, science and technology, and ocean studies. The institution is under the management and control of the Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $892.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (2015), based on expenditures of more than $866.6 million in fiscal year 2015. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit http://research.tamu.edu.

Media contact: Bob Wright, Marketing and Communications, Texas A&M University at Galveston, at (409) 740-4840 or WrightB@TAMUG.edu.

For more news about Texas A&M University, see https://today.tamu.edu/.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TAMU

Related Stories

Recent Stories