Pink, fuzzy and lurking deep in the ocean — new lobster species is one of 5 just found
It doesn’t look like a typical lobster you would see on a menu. It’s pink and has a layer of fuzz coating its hard shell.
It’s called a squat lobster.
Five new species of the odd crustacean have been identified by a team of scientists, with their findings published in Invertebrate Systematics.
“Deep-sea diversity is really, really unknown,” study author Paula Rodríguez-Flores told The Harvard Gazette on March 14. “We know maybe 10 percent, or even less, of the marine fauna. It’s the most unexplored habitat in the world.”
Squat lobsters are deep-sea dwellers, according to the study, and are one of the most abundant groups of decapods, a type of crustacean, in the sea.
They come from an animal family called Munidopsidae, a group that includes 300 different species. The researchers said that species are added to this family every year as scientists begin to explore some of the most remote reaches of the ocean.
They said it means a “great deal of diversity remains to be discovered.”
So they got to work.
The researchers used remotely operated vehicles and a human-driven underwater vehicle, called Alvin, to explore hydrothermal vents, cold vents and the ocean floor. They collected squat lobsters for museum specimens from the Galapagos, Costa Rica and California over the course of a decade, according to the study published in January.
Then, they looked at the squat lobsters’ morphology, or their physical and genetic attributes.
“[We] have found that the current taxonomic classification does not reflect the evolutionary history, so we have to revise the classification,” Rodríguez-Flores told The Harvard Gazette.
The researchers identified five new species as part of the squat lobster family.
Most of the squat lobsters are light or almost white in color because they are at the bottom of the ocean, but some stand out.
One is bright pink with purple polka dots; another is bright yellow with a racing stripe, The Harvard Gazette reported.
One of the new species, named after one of the researchers on the project, Peter Girguis, is pink and fuzzy and found off the coast of California.
“[Girguis] was very excited to collect this species because it’s really special,” Rodríguez-Flores told The Harvard Gazette. “It’s pink and fuzzy. They are so cute.”
The researchers said that the classification of new species is about more than just scientific discovery. It’s about identifying species that need to be protected.
“Taxonomic knowledge is fundamental for investigating evolutionary and biogeographical questions regarding deep-sea taxa, in an era where the deep sea has become a target of economic interests as a source of multiple natural resources,” the study concluded. “Now more than ever there is a need to explore and study deep-sea species diversity and to understand these unique ecosystems before human activity has an irreversible impact.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2023 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Pink, fuzzy and lurking deep in the ocean — new lobster species is one of 5 just found."
