"Gammaropsis elvirae": the new crustacean found 70 meters deep in the Yucatan Sea

A doctoral student discovered a new crustacean in the Yucatan platform, which he named after his wife.

The animal will be registered as Gammaropsis elvirae, in the honor of Elvira, wife of Carlos Paz, PhD student in ecology and sustainable development, at Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Ecosur).

Paz discovered this new species of crustacean in the Plataforma of Yucatán, as part of the long-term research program on marine biodiversity and climate change (Biomarcca), and in collaboration with its tutor, Daniel Pech.

In a statement, Ecosur pointed out that this discovery is an important step in the history of the project because it shows that there is still a lot of unknown maritime territory for scientists and the abundance of other species remains to be known.

In November 2018, researchers explored the waters of the Yucatan platform. Only 70 meters deep, they discovered that this new type of crustacean abounds at sea.

The crustacean belongs to the family Photidae Boeck, discovered in 1871, settling in vast and diverse habitats and soft sediments, common in the Yucatan platform, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The physical characteristics of Gammaropsis elvirae it makes it different from the rest of the genreaccording to the researchers, who have detailed their characteristics.

Among them, that Lateral cephalic lobes and rounded outer lobes of the lower lip with a cone in each lobe.

Before the discovery of Gammaropsis elvirae, The last discovery in the Yucatan Sea took place in 2015, when researchers discovered a unique species producing a toxic substance to reach their prey.

It is the only poisonous crustacean among the 70,000 species of crustaceans that inhabit the world and has been named Xibalbanus tulumensis by researchers from the Institute of Biology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who discovered the animal.

A crustacean is a clbad of arthropods, gill breathing animals, with two pairs of antennas and a variable number of appendices and which are covered with a generally calcified shell.

Crustaceans are a subphylum of arthropods and there are over 70,000 species, such as crabs, shrimp, lobster and shrimp.

Magazines specialized in the world They disseminated this discovery and emphasized its relevance in marine life research.