Overview
- Argentine researchers published the formal description of Bathycidaris argentina as a new genus and species in The Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
- The urchin lives in the Mar del Plata submarine canyon on the country’s continental slope, a site the authors describe as a biodiversity hotspot.
- The team combined detailed morphology with DNA analyses using specimens gathered during CONICET’s Talud Continental campaigns aboard the research vessel Puerto Deseado.
- The animal is tiny and violet, reaches about 2 centimeters wide and 1 centimeter tall without its spines, inhabits 1,100 to 1,950 meters, and shows parental care as females brood embryos near the mouth.
- The study reports spines that host other organisms and genetic results that point to a needed taxonomic overhaul within the urchin family Ctenocidaridae.