A new deep-sea isopod has been described by a research team from the USA and Germany and named after the Frankfurt marine scientist Angelika Brandt. The sea isopod, which now bears the name Austroniscus brandtae, is the first species of the genus Austroniscus from the Atlantic and the world’s deepest record of the group, as the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum announced on Thursday in Frankfurt.
According to the information, the animal, which comes from the Puerto Rico Trench in the northwestern Atlantic, was collected in 2015. Contrary to what was expected, the isopod colonized an enormous depth range between 4552 and 8338 meters, it said.
According to the research institute, the deepest environment on earth forms along the plate boundaries, where oceanic ones push under continental plates – the hadal zone with depths of more than six to almost eleven kilometers. “The communities in these zones of the sea are – due to the great logistical and technical limitations in sampling – probably the least known fauna on earth,” said Senckenberg scientist Stefanie Kaiser.
Because of the large depth differences between sampling sites in the Puerto Rico Trench, the research team expected to find different species within the genus. “However, by means of morphological investigation with traditional microscopy and subsequent molecular analysis, we were able to show that only the species we newly described, Austroniscus brandtae, inhabits the seabed of the Puerto Rico Trench,” explained Kaiser. “Austroniscus brandtae appears to be doing very well in the depths of the Puerto Rico Trench – suggesting that diversity in the deep-sea trenches is declining and few species have coped with the extreme conditions there.”
The 2.7 centimeter crustacean was named after the scientist Brandt to honor her “extraordinary research achievements” and her commitment to the protection of the deep sea. Brandt has headed the Marine Zoology department at the Senckenberg site in Frankfurt since 2017 and teaches at the Goethe University there.
