A New Species of Cumacean

Volume two of the New Zealand Inventory of Biodiversity has just been published by Canterbury University Press. Edited by NIWA's Dennis Gordon it is part of a 3-volume stocktake of New Zealand's biodiversity. Volume two covers the part of the Animal Kingdom known as Ecdysozoa - or moulting animals. It includes the familiar - insects and spiders, and the not so familiar - such as water bears and mud dragons.

Alison Ballance heads out to Porirua Harbour with crustacean experts Sarah Gerken from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and Kareen Schnabel from NIWA, to search out some of the book's lesser known subjects, a group of small crustaceans known as cumaceans or comma shrimps. The cumacean hunt turns up a brand new species, which is possibly not that surprising as Sarah Gerken reckons about 95% of cumacean species have not yet been discovered.

The new comma shrimp joins three species from a related group of crustaceans - the tanaids - that are also new to science. All four new species were collected during the 2011 Mana Bioblitz, which ended last Sunday with a tally of 1291 species.