Nature Blog Network

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Deep Fried Shrimp!

Kevin gets published!

After a three year gestation period, Kevin, and co-author Stephane Hourdez' 20 page paper "A new species of Alvinocaris (Crustacea: Decapoda: Caridea: Alvinocarididae) from hydrothermal vents at the Lau Basin, southwest Pacific, and a key to the species of Alvinocarididae." is out in the wild!

In it they describe a bigger, oranger species of alvinocaridid, Alvinocaris komaii, discovered in the Lau Basin of the South Pacific. I always love species description papers and this one does not fail to delight with wonderful holotype illustrations including details of the distinctive telson and dactyli of some of the pereopods . They also discuss the new species place in the whole Alvinocaris genus, and oh yes, a dichotomous key of all known species of Alvinocarididae!



I'm really impressed with the paper and with species description, molecular evidence and dichotomous key it is very complete! Awesome job.

So, I take it A. komaii was named for Tomoyuki Komai of Natural History Museum and Institute in Japan?

3 comments:

  1. Yep! The species is named after Tomo for all his important and comprehensive contributions to this family of vent shrimp. I am proud to be the one honoring him with this shrimp.

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  2. Awesome!
    An excellent name and honorable namee and namer.
    Did you do the illustrations?

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  3. My coauthor did Fig. 2A and 2B. We both did Fig. 2C, 2D, 3A, 3B. I did all other drawings in Fig. 2,3,4,5. :)

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