On the mother of all class field trips, a new species of marine roly poly pillbug was discovered, Los Angeles researchers from the county Natural History Museum confirm. The discovery was made as an invertebrate zoology lab course from Loyola Marymount University taught by researcher Dean Pentcheff of the museum explored a small, dirty, rocky beach at the southernmost tip of the city; less than a mile from the busiest port in America.
"We discovered it clutching on for dear life to one of the five arms of a common sea star," Pentcheff says. "As soon as we saw this bumpy little guy, we knew it was something special that the researchers at NHM had to see, but my class and I had no idea we were looking at a new species."
This newly discovered marine pillbug is directly related to the terrestrial pillbugs found in backyards (or isopod, as it is known to biologists). But despite their misleading name, all pillbugs, even the ones in your yard, are isopods not insects. Isopods are crustaceans specially adapted for living on dry land.
When he saw the new species, Pentcheff knew the strange looking animal was an isopod but needed help learning more. He gave the specimen to world isopod experts Dr. Regina Wetzer, Associate Curator and Director of the Marine Biodiversity Center, and Adam Wall, Assistant Collections Manager for Crustacea at NHM.
"Once we got the specimen to the Museum, we knew it was something unusual. But it was so small that we couldn't just use a normal light microscope to study it. We had to use a scanning electron microscope," says Adam Wall, lead author of the scientific paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys describing the new discovery.
"It is amazing to think that you can discover a new species in one of the most urban places in the world like the Port of Los Angeles," says Wall. "What is even better is that it wasn't an older guy wearing a white lab coat or a marine biologist in SCUBA gear that discovered it. It was a group of college students and their teacher in a regular college class -- true citizen scientists," said Wall.
Stranger still, while documenting that new species and comparing it to specimens in the NHM Crustacea collection and other collections, Wall and Wetzer discovered a second new species that had been preserved, unrecognized, for over a century.
"It was really exciting to discover a new species that had just been hiding in a collection room for 142 years, waiting for someone to come along and realize it was a new species," Wall says. "NHM's Crustacea collection is the fourth largest in the world, with millions of specimens in it. There are more new species in it, waiting to be discovered."
"One of the best things about discovering a new species is you get to name it. We named the new species from Los Angeles Exosphaeroma pentcheffi in recognition of the amazing teacher who discovered the first specimen. We named the 142-year-old Alaskan species Exosphaeroma paydenae in honor of Joan Payden, a passionate supporter of science at the Museum, whose support made this discovery possible."
