Strange New Clam Species, Named Waldo, Discovered on Spines of Sea Urchins
Posted on July 20, 2013
A strange new species of clam, named Waldo, has been discovered on the spines of California sea urchins. Waldo arthuri have a thin, translucent shell and long willowy tentacles. The thin shell of the weird clam is covered by a warty skin. The image below shows one of them crawling on a sea urchin spine.
The clam, Waldo arthuri, was discovered at the same time in two different locations (over 1,000 miles apart) by two different marine zoologists: Paul Valentich-Scott from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Diarmaid O' Foighil from the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology. The researchers collaborated with Jingchun Li, a clam DNA specialist at the University of Michigan. Li determined the new species was very distinct genetically.
O' Foighil said in a statement, "We were looking closely at sea urchins and noticed something crawling on the fine spines covering the urchin body. We were amazed to see that there were minute clams crawling all over the sea urchin."
The research was published here in ZooKeys.
