New species Liu's deep-sea floating firefly discovered in Nansha Trough

It was recently learned that researcher Yin Jianqiang and others from the Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Biological Resources and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered and named a new planktonic ostracod species in the deep water area of ​​the Nansha Trough, named Bathyconchoecia liui (Figure 1 ), in memory of Liu Ruiyu, my country’s famous marine biologist and crustaceanologist. The results were published in Crustaceana, a professional journal of crustaceanology, and were funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

According to reports, this species belongs to the phylum Arthropods, the subphylum Crustacea, the class Ostracods, the order Amphibians, the family Amphithidae, and the subfamily Amphibians. It lives in the dark environment of the deep sea at 1500-2600 meters, and uses the sedimentation of Organic debris is food and belongs to crush-feeding animals. It has the typical characteristics of planktonic ostracods, such as glands on the carapace that secrete luminescent substances and can emit fluorescence.

The Nansha Islands sea area is spread out over a wide continental shelf, dotted with reefs and shoals, and deep ocean basins and troughs, presenting a complex and diverse habitat for marine life. In terms of marine biological zoning, this sea area is one of the areas with the richest tropical marine life species in the world.

Since 1984, the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology has conducted long-term and continuous scientific surveys of the Nansha Islands and adjacent sea areas. With the advancement and development of deep-sea biological sampling technology and methods, more new species of zooplankton will be discovered.

Morphological diagram of the new species Bathyconchoecia liuin.sp.

animal tags： Hylophoridae