Dec. 4 () –
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research have discovered a new species of burrowing marine mollusk in the deep waters of the North Atlantic.
The newly discovered mollusk lives in the abyss, below 3,300 meterswith an anemone on its shell, an arrangement that had not been seen before in this region.
The team collected several specimens of the new tusk-shelled mollusk with seafloor anemones and observed many more using seafloor images. The anemone changes the mollusk’s burrowing lifestyle, who can’t dig as deep as he could without his passenger.
Lead author Katrin Linse, senior biodiversity biologist at BAS (British Antarctic Survey), says in a statement: “It was exciting to discover a new species, but realizing that its living arrangement had not been seen before in the region in such deep waters was really fascinating. This reminds us that we know very little about life in the depths, in particular about their adaptation and how species come together to benefit from each other’s presence.
Life in the depths is hard. Sunlight does not reach this depth and very few humans have been this deep in special submersibles.. To investigate life at the bottom of the abyssal ocean, Katrin Linse and her colleagues aboard the RV Sonne used a small net, known as an Agassiz trawl, which can be deployed thousands of meters deep, to collect samples from the sea floor. of Labrador, between northeastern Canada and western Greenland.
They collected several specimens of the new mollusk, which at 1.1 cm in diameter and 5.5 cm long is larger than its closest relatives. It is slightly curved, with 60 ribsand is a member of the genus Fissidentalium, which has more than 60 known species. They named it Fissidentalium aurae, from the Latin word for breeze, in reference to the windy conditions during the expedition.
Jenny Neuhaus, co-author and PhD student at Senckenberg, took DNA samples from the anemone and compared its genetic barcode to known barcodes in genetic databases, without finding any match. The position of the anemone on the tree of life and its scientific name It is an enigma that has not yet been solved.
The association between a burrowing tusk shell and an anemone had previously been observed in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, but never in the Atlantic. The research highlights the benefit of deep-sea imagery to support species descriptions with information about their habitat and ecology.
The complete research has been published in the journal Marine Biodiversity.
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