Wednesday 28 March 2012

Deep-sea diversity surprises researchers

Scientists have shed new light on the evolution of deep-sea creatures by looking at the genes of one shrimp-like species, rather than their physical characteristics.

Working in the seas around New Zealand, the scientists concentrated on a closely-related group of species, known as a genus, called Rhachotropis. They found a new species and made fundamental discoveries about the family's origins – it turns out that not all New Zealand members descend from a common ancestor.
'In the science field I'm in, finding a new species is quite regular,' explains Dr Katrin Linse of the British Antarctic Survey, one of the international team behind the paper, which appears in PLoS ONE. 'We're going to areas where noone has ever looked before.'

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