The entertainment capital of the world, known for offering a myriad of attractions and activities, has a newly discovered animal species named after its honor: the Los Angeles thread millipede.
A Leggy New Star
The newfound species was discovered by naturalists Cedric Lee of the University of California and James Bailey, who were exploring a hiking area in Southern California. In 2018, they were on a slug-finding mission in Lake Forest looking for gelatinous gastropods when they stumbled upon a type of millipede different from those they had previously seen.
Lee and Bailey uploaded a record of their discovery to the iNaturalist app, which lets the users share pictures of organisms they find. The specimen was identified as a member of the Siphonophoridae family and was given the scientific name Illacme socal. Its closest relatives can be found either in South Africa or in Chile.
The arthropod is just the third known species in its genus, belonging to a group of millipedes that live in isolation from its relatives. It is also famous for its subterranean lifestyle, where it thrives 10 centimeters underground. It has a pale appearance that is translucent and sinuous, like a jellyfish tentacle.
It is so tiny that it only reaches the length of a paperclip and is as skinny as a pencil lead. Despite having 486 legs, the critter is blind and relies only on hornlike antennae sticking out from its head to find its way out. Additionally, the millipede has a helmet-like head and secretes an unusual chemical.
The discovery also caught the attention of millipede biologist Paul Marek from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg because the only places in California he knows to cater to this animal are hundreds of kilometers away from Los Angeles. Lake Forest is about 80 kilometers southwest of California, so Marek decided to team up with Lee and Baily to solve this mystery.
Marek went to Lake Forest during his Christmas visit to California in search of more millipedes. His team successfully collected around ten samples to be used in understanding the variation of the critter. Then the male's gonopods, sperm transfer organs that evolved from its leg segments, were analyzed to check for any matching species. The result of genome sequencing confirmed that the Los Angeles millipedes are a newfound species of arthropods.
Many species of millipedes can be found lurking close to the surface of the ground. However, the animals in the Illacme genus prefer to dig deep, so it is not surprising that the newfound species have not yet been discovered for so long.
READ ALSO : 1,300-Legged Millipede Discovered in Australia; Study Reveals New Species is a Record Breaker
Surviving the Subterranean Environment
Underground environments are characterized by continuous darkness and limited variability of abiotic factors such as temperature, moisture, and water. Terrestrial subterranean environments are famous for their networks of cavities which range in length, size, and depth from the surface. An animal is safe from predators in a subterranean ecotope, but it makes them unproductive with inefficient foraging skills.
To survive this habitat, ground-dwelling animals demonstrate morphological and behavioral adaptations and have evolved special physiological characteristics. For instance, they can reduce energy consumption which is proven to be a selective advantage in cave animals. Structural and functional changes also happen to subterranean animals, which can be regressive or progressive.
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