‘Shining' creature with ‘flat' back found at hotel in Laos. It's a new species
As a rainstorm passed over a hotel in a small town of Laos, a 'shining' creature with a 'flat' back emerged from its hiding place and crawled up a tree trunk. Something about it caught the attention of returning scientists — and for good reason.
It turned out to be a new species.
A team of researchers spent four years traveling the Southeast Asian country of Laos and surveying millipedes, according to a study published May 16 in the peer-reviewed journal ZooKeys.
During a field trip in 2017, researchers returned to 'Phu Thevada Hotel in the evening following a rainfall, after a full day of collecting' specimens, the study said. To their surprise, 'the rainfall prompted millipedes and land snails to emerge.'
Researchers collected dozens of millipedes from the ground and trees around the hotel. They took a closer look at the animals and realized they'd discovered a new species: Touranella srisonchaii, or Srisonchai's flat-back millipede.
Srisonchai's flat-back millipedes can reach out about an inch in length, the study said. Their 'smooth and shining' bodies have 20 segments and 'moderately long' antennae.
Photos show the black millipede and its 'pale yellowish' legs.
Researchers said they named the new species after Ruttapon Srisonchai, a millipede researcher at Khon Kaen University, 'who has not only contributed to the study of millipede taxonomy in Thailand, but also collected the type series of this new species.'
So far, Srisonchai's flat-back millipedes have only been found around Phu Thevada Hotel in Paksong, a city in southern Laos, a landlocked country bordering Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
Phu Thevada Hotel shared a photo of the hotel building in a 2010 Facebook post.
Much about the lifestyle and behavior of Srisonchai's flat-back millipedes remains unknown.
The new species was identified by its genitalia and other subtle physical features, the study said. Researchers did not include a DNA analysis of the new species.
The research team included Natdanai Likhitrakarn, Sergei Golovatch, Khamla Inkhavilay, Somsak Panha and Chirasak Sutcharit.
The team also discovered two more new species of flat-back millipede, including one at an ancient Hindu temple.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
There's an Invisible Line That Animals Don't Cross. Here's Why.
The animal kingdoms of Asia and Australia are worlds apart, thanks to an invisible line that runs right between the two neighboring continents. Most wildlife never cross this imaginary boundary, not even birds. And so it has been for tens of millions of years, shaping animal evolution in different ways on each side. It all started about 30 million years ago, when the Australian tectonic plate bashed up against the Eurasian tectonic plate and created an archipelago, rerouting ocean currents and creating new regional climates. On one side of the map, in Indonesia and Malaysia, monkeys, apes, elephants, tigers, and rhinos evolved; while on the other side, in New Guinea and Australia, marsupials, monotremes, rodents, and cockatoos flourish. Very few species are abundant on both sides. The curious faunal divide is named Wallace's Line – after the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who first noticed the stark difference in animal life (mostly mammals) while exploring the region in the mid-19th century. "We may consider it established that the Strait of Lombok [between Bali and Lombok] only 15 miles wide [24 kilometers] marks the limit and abruptly separates two of the great zoological regions of the globe," Wallace wrote. The naturalist later went on to independently develop a theory of evolution around the same time as Charles Darwin. The line he drew on a map more than a century ago is still considered a hypothetical evolutionary barrier, although debates continue as to its exact location and mechanisms. Generally speaking, Wallace's line separates a shelf of the Asian continent from a shelf of the Australian tectonic plate. It is a geological line, but it is also a climatic and biological one. Deep ocean channels like the Lombok Strait separate each shelf, which makes it difficult for animals to cross. Even when sea levels in the distant past were much lower than today, this chasm would have still existed. While Wallace's invisible line is most obvious when comparing mammals in Asia and Australia, it also exists for birds, reptiles, and other animals. Even creatures with wings don't typically make the trip across Wallace's line, and in the ocean, some types of fish and microbes show genetic differences on one side of the border compared to the other, indicating very little mixing between populations. Scientists have yet to figure out what invisible barriers are holding these species back. Habitat and climate, however, are probably factors accentuating the evolutionary divide. In 2023, an analysis of more than 20,000 vertebrate species found that Southeast Asian lineages evolved in a relatively tropical ancient environment that allowed them to spread out toward New Guinea on humid island "stepping stones". Wildlife on the Australian continental shelf, meanwhile, evolved in distinctly drier conditions, which dictated a different evolutionary path. This meant that Australian wildlife was at a disadvantage in the tropical islands nearer the equator. The more researchers study the Wallace line, however, the less clear it becomes about where the line should be drawn and how 'porous' the barrier might be – at least to some animals that can swim, float, or fly, like bats, beetles, monitor lizards, or macaques. Wallace's divide isn't an absolute border, but more of a gradient, scientists say. Even still, the blurry line helps us make sense of animal evolution for thousands of species. "Darwin's and Wallace's mental and actual maps were the table on which the evolutionary scheme was played out, comparable in importance to the geological time scale," argued science historian Jane Camerini in 1993 for the History of Science Society. What started as a single, roughly placed line, drawn more than a century ago, has now helped shape a bigger and more complicated picture of the natural world and its mysteries. Dehorning Rhinos Cuts Poaching by 78% – Saving Thousands of Animals' Lives Worms Use Their Bodies to Build Towers as a Wild Survival Strategy Elusive LSD Fungus Finally Discovered on Flower
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
Lake creatures — with hatched babies in their mouth — are new species. See them
In Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, rocky outcrops provide a home for freshwater snails. It's also where they are hunted. The lake covers land in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in eastern Africa, and the southern end is now home to two newly discovered species of 'snail crushers.' Six species of Labrochromis, a genus of mollusk-eating cichlid fishes, have been identified in Lake Victoria before, but none from the areas of the lake marked by rocky shores and reefs, according to a June 5 study published in the peer-reviewed journal ZooKeys. Using gill nets between 1993 and 2010, researchers searched around Python Island, Kissenda Island and Makobe Island within the lake, and found two species of cichlid that looked different than ones found in other parts of Lake Victoria, according to the study. They were described as two new species — Labrochromis mawe and Labrochromis mawepili. Labrochromis mawe, or the stone snail-crusher is a 'large growing robust and deep-bodied species with a blunt and wide head,' researchers said. They have two rows of teeth, with an outer pointy row and a smaller inner row, according to the study. The fish also have 'strongly enlarged' pharyngeal teeth, a set of teeth that sit inside the throat on the pharyngeal bone and are used for food processing and breaking down hard material like snail shells. Males and females of the species have 'broad vertical bars' of color on their sides, or flanks, researchers said. Male stone snail-crushers exhibit 'nuptial color polymorphism,' or bright colors on the body that only show during mating season, according to the study. The fish have two color morphs, either 'entirely blue on the flanks' or 'reddish' on the head with yellowish and grey coloration on other parts of the body, researchers said. 'The species inhabits moderately steep to steep slopes, with medium sized to very large rock boulders,' researchers said. 'Subadult individuals are commonly caught in shallow inshore waters between rock boulders while adults inhabit greater depths.' Stone snail-crushers, like all other Labrochromis found in Lake Victoria, are known as 'mouthbrooding care giver(s),' meaning the females of the species hold their eggs in their mouths until they hatch, according to the study. This practice provides the hatched larvae 'with a safe and nurturing environment until the larvae have resorbed the yolk sac and develop into independent, free-swimming juveniles,' researchers said. The second new species, Labrochromis mawepili, is similar to L. mawe. The 'species name mawepili, from Swahili, mawe means stone and pili means second,' researchers said. It 'refers to (the) similarity in habitat association between this species and L. mawe and the superficial resemblance with the latter.' But, the second stone snail-crusher is found in a different region of the lake, according to the study. 'Both adults and subadults exhibit a broken dorso lateral and broken mid-lateral bands, together with the 4 vertical bars creating a broken chessboard pattern,' researchers said. 'The broken chessboard pattern is more prominent in females and subadult males.' Males of this species also exhibit different colors during mating season, in this case 'metallic blueish' and 'purplish' or grey with 'red streaks.' The fish have the same breeding practice as L. mawe, and other species in their genus. 'Labrochromis mawe sp. nov. and L. mawepili sp. nov. are unique among described Labrochromis species in their tight association with rocky habitats, a feature not observed in other described Labrochromis species,' researchers said. 'Additionally, these newly described species exhibit smaller eyes than all previously described species, probably because they live in better illuminated habitat(s).' The new species were found in the Tanzania region of Lake Victoria, in east-central Africa. The research team includes Anna Mahulu and Ole Seehausen.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Rare black iceberg spotted off Labrador coast could be 100,000 years old, prof says
A rare black iceberg spotted off the coast of Labrador is making a splash on social media after a fish harvester living in Carbonear, N.L., took a photo of it while fishing for shrimp last month. Originally from the Faroe Islands, Hallur Antoniussen was working with a crew on board the Saputi factory freezer trawler off the coast of Labrador in mid-May. He'd never seen an iceberg like this one before. "I have seen icebergs that are rolled, what they say have rolled in the beach with some rocks in it. This one here is completely different. It's not only that he is all black. He is almost ... in a diamond shape," Antoniussen said in an interview with CBC Radio's Labrador Morning. He spotted the berg after going up the ship's crane when they were more than 100 kilometres offshore in the Hopedale channel, located between Nain and Hopedale. A crew member had counted 47 icebergs in the area just the day before. Antoniussen doesn't think it's a berg that tipped over — or rolled on the beach — picking up dirt and rocks after getting grounded. He's seen a lot of icebergs over his 50 years of fishing off of Greenland, and more recently off the Labrador coast since 1989. The 64-year-old said it was hard to estimate the size of the iceberg at sea but figured it was at least three times the size of a regular bungalow. He took a picture from roughly six kilometres away. "It's something you don't see very often, and a camera is not something I run around [with] when I'm working. So, I just ran to my room and took my phone and snapped this picture," he said. Antoniussen said the berg looked like a rock with lots of really dark greys and black veins in it, and quickly ruled out that a shadow was being cast on it. He took the photo to show other crew members on the fishing boat. Then Antoniussen posted it on Facebook, and it soon took off, garnering hundreds of comments after being shared around. Commenters have mused about everything from aliens to precious metals, and even dinosaurs being hidden in the ice. "It's an Oil Berg," said one poster. "Looks like a giant [woolly] mammoth!" exclaimed another. Antoniessen is clear: this is a real photo. Other people wondered if the iceberg has volcanic ash in it, a result of some ancient eruption. Lev Tarasov, a Memorial University professor of physical oceanography, doesn't rule that last theory out completely. Tarasov says there are volcanoes beneath the ice caps of Iceland, and while he's not exactly sure about volcanoes in Greenland, he added that scientists have measured hotspots in the landmass's central region. Like Antoniussen, he hasn't seen an iceberg quite like this one before. Tarasov observed smaller versions of the black iceberg during his fieldwork on the Kangerlussuaq Fjord in Greenland last summer -— just not as impressive, he said. He guesses it could be between 1,000 and 2,000 years old, but could also contain ice that's older than 100,000 years old. Tarasov said ice from all over Greenland is slowly converging toward its coastline, and when it gets there, it breaks off to form icebergs. Those icebergs can take one to three years before reaching the Newfoundland and Labrador coastline. Tarasov says it's a reminder just how dynamic ice can be. Ice streams, also known as outlet glaciers, move much faster than other parts of the ice sheet; they carry ice from the interior, traveling through deep valleys or channels out to the coast. They pick up rocks and dirt along the way. "There's parts of the ice that are actually flowing up to 20 kilometres per year, which would mean that ... the ice is moving maybe a few metres every hour," Tarasov said. The bottom of the ice grinds against the earth's crust, he explained. There's a whole lot of churning, turning all that rock and sediment into a powder that then spreads up through columns of ice. It would take a long time for that ground-up rock to spread so uniformly throughout the ice, Tarasov said. Tarasov theorizes that the black berg was probably part of a much larger chunk of ice before it broke off into the water. "Over time, as it travels around Baffin Bay and down the coast of Labrador, it's melting away. So I think a lot of that ice is melted away. Maybe the part that's clean is underneath, right? Again, 90 per cent of the ice is underneath the water. So we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg on top," he said. Tarasov thinks the iceberg rolled over at some point, and is now showing its underbelly. He also offers another possible explanation for the iceberg's intriguing colour. There is strong evidence showing that an asteroid struck the northwest corner of Greenland some 12,000 years ago, he said. The iceberg could have some dust from that meteorite strike if it came from the area. No matter what, the ice likely isn't new: it's quite possible the dirt on the iceberg may not have seen the "light of day for hundreds of thousands of years," Tarasov said. Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador.
