Living ‘fossil' found: Rare velvet worm species named after teenage explorer

Mail & Guardian

28-05-2025

Peripatopsis barnardi represents the first ever species from the Little Karoo, which indicates that the area was historically more forested than at present. It is one of seven new species from the Cape Fold Mountains described in a paper published in Ecology and Evolution. Image: Savel Daniels
In March 2022, Rohan Barnard was on a farm in the
In an ancient forest patch, buried deep in the moist sand below a pile of leaf litter at the edge of a small river, the grade nine student found a slate black velvet worm.
Because Barnard was already familiar with how
'I had a basic knowledge of the Cape velvet worms, having found one for the first time on Table Mountain in 2019,' said Barnard, now a third-year BSc student in conservation ecology and entomology at
His older brother was under assignment from his zoology lecturer,
The
Little did Barnard know at the time that he had just discovered a new species of velvet worm, now fittingly named Rohan's velvet worm or
Even more remarkably, it represents the first ever species from the Little Karoo, indicating that the area was historically more forested than at present.
Prehistorical lineage
According to
After viewing the rare find on iNaturalist, Daniels visited the same area in July 2022 and collected a paratype and another nine specimens for analysis. These velvet worms were hand-collected from under logs or stones, under moss close to stream beds and in decomposing leaf litter and placed into labelled plastic jars.
The results of his analysis and the announcement of seven new species of velvet worms, was
Ecology and Evolution
.
The seven new species are
P. fernkloofi, P. jonkershoeki, P. kogelbergi, P. landroskoppie, P. limietbergi
and
P. palmeri
. Apart from
P. barnardi
, all were named after their places of origin.
South Africa's velvet worms are mainly found in prehistoric
'In the present study, we sampled the Cape Fold Mountains, looking specifically for areas where we have not collected velvet worms before,' he noted.
The origin of these forest patches can be traced to the
'During the late Miocene, however, the region underwent significant climatic changes, with a decrease in rainfall due to the advent of the proto Benguela current along the West Coast, and two geotectonic uplifting events.
'These events resulted in a complex mosaic of habitat connectivity and isolation, what we know today as the Cape Fold Mountains, driving the speciation of habitat specialists such as velvet worms.'
A new velvet worm species, Peripatopsis barnardi, is named after Rohan Barnard, currently a third year BSc student in Conservation Ecology and Entomology at Stellenbosch University. He found a specimen while looking for insects in an ancient forest patch in a kloof in the Swartberg Mountains. Image supplied.
DNA techniques
Daniels used new mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequencing techniques, combined with morphological analysis and scanning electron microscopy, to determine that
P. barnardi
diverged from its most recent common ancestor about 15.2 million years ago. Another novel finding from the Cederberg Mountains,
P. cederbergiensis
, traces its lineage to 12.47 million years ago.
Velvet worms are soft-bodied arthropods in the phylum Onychophora and are a sibling grouping to the true
'Now, most people would remember from school biology that the true arthropods are the animals with hard exoskeletons — a classic example would be a crab or a crayfish or a dragonfly or a locust or an insect, for that matter.
'So, velvet worms are a very ancient group of animals. They have a fossil record dating back over 500 million years. If you think about how long these animals have been around in the terrestrial environment, and the fact that they are generally confined to forested habitats,' he said, noting that some species can occur in relatively arid areas, where they would be under logs or rocks, generally in proximity to a stream.
'Nevertheless, if you look at these ancient animals, these velvet worms, they are very good for us to use as non-model organisms to track how environmental change would have occurred from, for example, the Miocene.'
For the study, they sequenced a number of genes for newly collected velvet worms in areas, for example, the Little Karoo. 'And what we can do with this data is we can reconstruct the evolutionary history of the group and then we can apply divergence time estimation.'
This provides a calibration point for when specification would have occurred. 'And what these results clearly show is that, historically, velvet worms were more widely spread because, currently, if you think of the Karoo, you think of a relatively arid area, but the fact that there are velvet worms at the base of the great Swartberg mountains there suggests that, historically, the area was much wetter than what it is in a contemporary scenario.'
What the study shows is that the contraction and expansion of forests through ancient times has 'essentially resulted in the cladogenesis we observe, or the speciation, that we're seeing'.
On the study's importance, Daniels said that first, it indicates the power of citizen science which is 'where we first saw the post of the animals from the Little Karoo'.
'But I think, secondly, that it also suggests that all of these isolated little forest patches that we find across the Cape Fold Mountains in deep gorges and kloof areas essentially harbour very unique biodiversity.
'I think finally that what it is says is that we need more focused studies to sample these isolated areas for a large number of invertebrate species — animals without backbones — because, ultimately, what this will reveal is that the biodiversity of invertebrates in the Cape Fold Mountains is significantly higher than what we've thought until the present.'
Lucky find
In the Cape Fold Mountains, 'we now know that every mountain peak has an endemic species'.
'This suggests that, in unsampled areas, there is likely to be additional novel diversity waiting to be found,' he added.
Crucially, it means that these prehistoric forest fragments must be conserved to limit extinction.
Barnard counts himself lucky to be able to see the velvet worms.
'I have developed more of an appreciation for the uniqueness of these creatures, but my interest hasn't changed from being excited to find them in the wild and being able to show them to people who have never seen them before,' he said.
'I would still like to see all the Cape velvet worm species, but some of them are extremely rare. Currently, I have seen six out of 34 species.'
It still feels surreal to have such a fossil-like creature named after him: 'It is incredible to realise that I've uncovered a living fossil. It is as if I have found a missing link that we did not even know about.
'It gives me hope that there is still so much left to discover. But it also makes me worried for the future, that we will lose animals and plants to extinction that we did not even know existed.'