Deep inside a cave in Brazil, a crusty creature crawled alongside the moist, rocky floor. One thing concerning the subterranean animal caught the eye of close by scientists.
The scientists had been surveying wildlife in the reddish, iron-rich cave system of the Carajás Mountains, in accordance with a examine printed Sept. 13 in the journal Zoosystema. These “intensive surveys” befell between 2005 to 2019, “ensuing in a appreciable quantity of fabric accessible for examine.”
Throughout these cave surveys, scientists collected over 1,300 millipedes and preserved the specimens in museum collections however didn’t establish them, the examine mentioned.
Intrigued, one other group of researchers analyzed the millipedes and found they belonged to a new species: Pseudoporatia kananciue, or the Kananciuê millipede.
Kananciuê millipedes have 19 physique segments, or “physique rings,” which are “crusted by sediments of iron ore,” the examine mentioned. The millipedes have an unspecified variety of legs, that are “not seen from above.”
The Kananciuê millipede is taken into account “comparatively massive,” reaching about 0.3 inches in size, examine co-author Luiz Iniesta instructed McClatchy Information in an Oct. 24 e mail.
Photographs present a number of Kananciuê millipedes. The animal’s physique is a whitish cream coloration with speckles of orange-red, the identical coloration as the encircling dust. Their “physique rings” look nearly like waxy items and seem held collectively by the thinner worm-like physique beneath.
An in depth-up photograph of a single Kananciuê millipede exhibits a pair of antennae extending horizontally from its head.
Male Kananciuê millipedes have “quite advanced” genitalia, researchers mentioned. Its genitalia is situated close to its head segments and has an oval form, images in the examine present.
Kananciuê millipedes have a subterranean and cave-dwelling life-style. They like “moist areas with any natural particles” in the sections of the cave with minimal mild, the examine mentioned. Massive teams of millipedes had been found round “large deposits” of bat guano.
The new species is “broadly distributed” in rocky, iron-rich caves of the Carajás Mountains, researchers mentioned. These caves are “related with one another by a large community of small channels.”
Regardless of this habitat, the new species has “no clear morphological variations” for subterranean residing, Iniesta mentioned.
Researchers mentioned they named the new species after Kananciuê, the principle deity of the indigenous Karajás tribe that lives in the Carajás Mountains the place the millipedes had been found.
The Carajás Mountains are a part of a nationwide forest in the state of Pará and about 700 miles northwest of Brasília, the capital metropolis.
The new species was recognized by its physique segments, genitalia and different delicate bodily options, the examine mentioned. Researchers didn’t present a DNA evaluation of the new species.
“The species richness of millipedes stays vastly underestimated in the Amazonian rainforest,” researchers mentioned.
The analysis crew included Iniesta, Rodrigo Bouzan, Claudio Souza, Robson Zampaulo, Igor Cizauskas and Antonio Brescovit.
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