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from the how-do-they-taste-when-fried dept.
A team of Japanese scientists has discovered a new species of polychaete, a type of marine annelid worm, 9-meters deep underwater near Japan's Syowa Station in Antarctica, providing a good opportunity to study how animals adapt to extreme environments.
International efforts are currently underway in Antarctica to build long-term monitoring systems for land and coastal organisms from an ecological conservation standpoint. To this end, the accumulation of continent-wide fauna information is essential, but Japan is lagging behind in gathering and analyzing such data around Syowa Station, particularly in regard to coastal marine life.
To address this problem, in 2015 a team of researchers, including Keiichi Kakui, a lecturer at Hokkaido University, and Megumu Tsujimoto, a postdoctoral researcher at Japan's National Institute of Polar Research, started researching marine specimens stored at the institute, as well as newly collected specimens. As a part of this process, they conducted microscopic analyses to examine two annelid worms that scuba divers collected 8-9 meters deep on January 16th, 1981, at Nishinoura near Syowa Station.
The worm found 9 meters deep turned out to be a new, unnamed polychaete - a variety with a thick, gel-like coat and conspicuous, long notochaeta. The team named the new species Flabegraviera fujiae, taking after the icebreaker ship "Fuji" used in the expedition in 1981. The specimen collected 8 meters deep was recognized as Flabegraviera mundata, and was deemed to have been collected at the shallowest depth ever recorded for the Flabegraviera genus.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Thursday February 09 2017, @04:06PM
I was expecting it to be the IceWeasel [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday February 09 2017, @08:29PM
Actually, I'm more surprised there's no notes on how it tasted. You know, for scientific reasons.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Thursday February 09 2017, @04:53PM
http://biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4221.4.4 [biotaxa.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 09 2017, @07:38PM
Next time you complain that the AC vent or window is making your desk uncomfortable, have a thought for those brave people who scuba off the coast of Antarctica for science...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2017, @01:33AM
I'm thinking of those unlucky worms, who were pickled in 70% ethanol since 1981.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2017, @02:53AM
Did they mean 9km? People can easily dive 9m underwater without special equipment.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday February 10 2017, @04:08PM
People can easily dive 9m underwater without special equipment.
In Antarctica? I dunno about you but I'm not going swimming in that climate in just my board shorts. I'll be going with specialized gear to not freeze my nuts off.