Sérgio Nascimento Stampar, professor in the biological sciences department at Unesp in Bauru, was on an expedition with students, in Ubatuba, on the north coast of São Paulo, when a new species of sea anemone was collected without anyone expecting it.
“It was almost an accident,” says Stampar about the discovery, which occurred two years ago, while the group was following a shrimp trawl about 500 meters from the coast. The specimen was found living on sea snail shells at a depth of 5 to 20 m. “We had no idea that it was a new species, much less that it would be a new family, something very rare to happen nowadays, especially in such a populated place”, he says.
The new species, Antholoba fabianiand the new family, Antholobidae, were registered this year, in a scientific article in the journal Marine Biodiversity. The name of the new species pays homage to Fabián Acuña, one of the few anemone specialists in South America.
For Stampar, the discovery highlights the lack of knowledge, including species in areas with intense population density and highly commercially exploited, which indicates the importance of new studies on biodiversity. “This species could even become extinct without being known, as many individuals must be collected daily and probably killed in shrimp trawls.”
Proof
It was at the Aquatic Evolution and Diversity Laboratory (LEDALab), at the Faculty of Sciences at Unesp, that Colombian doctoral student Jeferson Durán Fuentes, supervised by Stampar, discovered morphological differences in the anemone found.
The new species has a brown color on the spine and white tentacles, in addition to a part of the body, called the oral disc, being cup-shaped, differentiating it from other known specimens.
“Antholoba achates, an evolutionarily close species, is reported from southern Brazil to Patagonia, Chile, Peru and New Zealand. It can be found in various colors, such as yellow, reddish, white, among others”, compares Fuentes, one of the authors of the scientific article on the new anemone.
“As anemones present great morphological variation, it is common for someone to claim to have found a new species, but we always need molecular data to confirm.” Therefore, DNA data was used to confirm the discovery.
International support
As the proof involved studying species that do not only occur in Brazil, international support was necessary. The research for the article, which lasted around two years, included the collaboration of scientists from the National University of Mar del Plata, in Argentina, and the Ohio State University, in the USA.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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This content was originally published in Professor discovers species of anemone on expedition with students on the coast of SP on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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