New species found

This is an interesting article about a new species of hairy lobster found near Easter Island.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/08...r.ap/index.html

M.

That is wild looking. Very interesting.

Joe

The piece says that divers found it at 2300m. WOW their breathing mix must be something else! I do worry about some journalism.......

Alvin can do the job, i guess

That's a breath-hold dive for Lambis

Joe

The public logs & pictures of the Easter Island expedition are at http://www.mbari.org/expeditions/EasterMicroplate/index.htm The samples were indeed taken by Alvin and the new crab was probably taken on 24 March 2005, as the log mention "white, hairy galatheids".

We find new species all the time. The invert fauna from the west coast of North America is very well known but I still have a list of over 200 new species of polychaetes. A survey I'm working on now has produced another 53 possible new species. New fish species have been described at a rate of about 270 a year in the last 3 years. A new family is rarer but still not that uncommon.

What's unusual is the amount of press this critter is getting. The bigger research institutions, museums, & universities have all been spending a lot of money on PR for this sort of thing lately. The public perception (including policy makers & politicians) is that nearly everthing's been described so taxonomy is unnecessary. It's hard to find people who want to become taxonomists - the pay is poor, there's little respect, and jobs are rare. Yet as fast as humans are modifying the world around them the more crucial it is to describe the earth's other inhabitants and understand their ecological roles before they disappear. the lack of taxonomists is reaching crisis level. Publicizing these new discoveries is an effort to reverse the current states of affairs so taxonomists and taxonomic studies will be supported for the future.

There was also video footage of the critter in the dutch news. It said it was so special that it got moved into its own family. The trouble is, they kept refering to the hairs as special. But i know these hairs also from a chinese wooly hand crab, (i just translated the dutch name into english) that turned up in Europe : Eriocheir sinensis.

I am a sour biologist (although more interest in ecology) who couldnt really find a job in "real" biology, so i am a consultant instead :-) Pity that the results of finding the more special species are gladly recieved by the press, but no the amount of work involved. Also in the news a few weeks/months ago was a new species of ant in the green area between the lanes of a highway.

gerard

Alvin was just a guess, btw