A photo of the spiny lobster, another
species of the crustacean.
Image: Tammy616/iStockphoto
MV researcher Dr Jo Taylor recently documented 10 species of squat
lobsters along the continental margin of Western Australia, including
two species that are new to science and six that are recorded for the
first time from Australian waters.
Jo has named one of the new species, Munidopsis comarge, in
recognition of the Census of Marine Life Project: Continental Margin
Ecosystems (COMARGE) that funded her postdoctoral fellowship.
Species of the genus Munidopsis are typical animals of the
deep sea. The genus is one of the most diverse and species-rich of all
the squat lobsters, including more than 225 species from oceans
worldwide. Munidopsis species are commonly distributed from the
lower continental shelf, usually deeper than 500 m, and around 20 per
cent of species are known to occur on the abyssal plain at
depths greater than 3000 m. One has even been recorded from the wreck of
the Titanic!
This new species publication coincides with the release of the Census
of Marine Life's 'A Decade of Discovery' - the culmination of ten years
of collaboration between 2700 scientists from over 80 nations worldwide
to uncover the extraordinary diversity and abundance of life in the
sea. MV's Tim O'Hara and Gary Poore attended the celebrations in London
this month.
Jo's paper, 'New records and new species of the munidopsine squat
lobsters (Decapoda: Anomura: Galatheidae: Munidopsinae) from Australia',
is co-authored by Shane Ahyong from the Australian Museum and Nikos
Andreakis from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. It is
published in the journal Zootaxa today.
Editor's Note:
Original news release can be found here.
