These rare and unusual worms decided that one wormy body just wasn’t enough. We have seen a lot of weird animals but branching annelids have got to be some of the strangest. When you study branching annelids, it’s not so much opening a can of worms as it is a can of worm. King Ghidorah's Branching Worm ( Ramisyllis kingghidorahi) The sponge crabs of Western Australia and the Northwest Shelf with descriptions of new genera and species (Crustacea: Brachyura: Dromiidae). beagle belongs to and explains their common name of “sponge crabs.” This tendency to wear a sponge hat is widespread among the larger family of crabs that L. beagle from the surrounding sponge and rock rubble habitats in the shallow seas of Western Australia. The hairy body and sponge cap make it hard for predators like octopus or fish to distinguish L. The hard shell or carapace of this crab is hidden beneath a fluffy layer of hair-like setae and then further disguised by a chunk of sponge (or colonial ascidian), which the crab plucks and then shapes to fit over its head and back and holds in place with specialized legs. With a scientific name commemorating two key figures of evolutionary biology-the French anatomist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the HMS Beagle-it’s no surprise that Lamarkdromia beagle is an evolutionary marvel. In 1836, during the second voyage of the HMS Beagle (the ship whose voyage inspired Charles Darwin to synthesize his theory of evolution), Darwin spent eight days in the Albany region of Western Australia, in the vicinity of the type locality of this new species, Mistaken Island. This top-ten list is just a small highlight of about 2,000 fascinating new marine species discovered every year (there were almost 1,700 marine species described in 2022 and added to WoRMS, including some 300 fossil species).įluffy Sponge Crab ( Lamarckdromia beagle) We celebrate the work of taxonomists now with the WoRMS list of the top-ten marine species described in 2022 as nominated and voted for by taxonomists, journal editors and WoRMS users! Today is a chance for us at WoRMS to thank our taxonomic editors for this important task. Some 300 taxonomists globally also contribute their valuable time to keeping the World Register of Marine Species up to date. The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) has again released its annual list of the top-ten marine species described by researchers during the past year to coincide with World Taxonomist Appreciation Day on March 19th.Įvery day in labs, museums, and out on fieldwork, taxonomists are busy collecting, cataloguing, identifying, comparing, describing, and naming species new to science.
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