New Bivalve Species Discovered Living on a Sea Cucumber
Posted on September 8, 2016
Scientists have discovered a new bivalve species that lives on sea cucumbers. Most bivalve species live attached to a rocky surface in the sand or mud. The new species was discovered in mudflats at the mouth of the Souzu River, southwestern Shikoku Island, Japan.
The new species was identified by Ryutaro Goto, postdoctoral fellow in Museum of Zoology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, and Hiroshi Ishikawa, an amateur malacologist in Japan. The new species has been named Borniopsis mortoni (Galeommatoidea). An image of its shell is pictured below. The tiny brownish shells reach up to 4.1 mm in length.
Sea cucumbers like to burrow in mudflats. By living on the sea cucumbers the bivalves also get to use the sea cucumber burrows as protection from potential predators. The researchers think the small body size of B. mortini is adaptation to living in the small sea cucumber burrows. A research paper on the new species can be found here in ZooKeys.