Four new New Zealand water bear species discovered in the Southern Alps

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-10-07 11:44

New Zealand

Image by Lisset A. Duran via the paper: "Tardigrades exhibit robust interlimb coordination across walking speeds and terrains"

Four new species of tardigrade – also known as water bears or moss piglets – have been discovered in the Southern Alp Glaciers of Aotearoa. Tardigrades are microscopic, eight-legged, invertebrate animals known for their ability to withstand Earth’s most extreme environments, and these species likely split apart due to glacial fragmentation. One of the newly described species has a transparent body, similar to water bear species found in the Arctic and Antarctic. The three other species are dark-coloured like many other high mountain glacier tardigrades, but they also had some “extraordinary and unique” features that have never been described before.

Media release

From:

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research Elsevier, Web page

Journal/
conference: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Funder: Collections were made under DOC concession numbers CA-31615-OTH and 82208-RES. Study supported by Rutgers Global Grant 302945 to DHS and PKD and Project AMELIA funded by Adam Mickiewicz University to KZ. KZ would like to thank Piotr Rozwalak and Jakub Buda for DNA isolation. During this study, DS was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP).

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.