Experts assigned the new species to a new genus, which they named Austroplatybdellina, translated from Latin as southern platybdelina.
Ukrainian scientists have discovered a new species of Antarctic leeches, whose ancestors migrated to the Arctic millions of years ago and then returned to Antarctica. This was reported by the National Antarctic Science Center.
It is known that this discovery was made by zoologists Andrey and Sergey Utevsky in collaboration with foreign colleagues Alexander Beletsky and Joanna Cichocka from Poland, Mario Santoro from Italy and Peter Trontel from Slovenia.
They studied the distribution of fish parasites – pessicolid leeches. When a new species is discovered, experts carefully study its external and internal structure, as well as nuclear and mitochondrial genes.
“It turns out that the new leech belongs to a group called” platybdelins. They are common in the Arctic and adjacent waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It’s like finding a polar bear in Antarctica! “Said Sergei Utevsky.
Next, researchers began to study how such an extraordinary geographical distribution could occur, since most animals live exclusively in either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.
“Phylogenetic analysis and reconstruction of ancestral ranges showed that fish leeches originated in the seas around Antarctica, then they spread throughout the World Ocean, reaching the Arctic and penetrating the fresh water bodies of the Northern Hemisphere. However, then the ancestor of our species returned from the north to the ancestral homeland of the entire family of fish leeches in Antarctica,” the scientists discovered.
The new species split from its northern relatives about 1.76 million years ago during the Pleistocene, when the Earth’s surface experienced significant cooling. During this time he crossed the tropics.
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It was previously reported that in Indonesia, scientists discovered Attenborough’s echidna, which was last seen more than 60 years ago.
Source: korrespondent
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