Posted on 05/18/2015 9:05:18 AM PDT by Red Badger
A new research paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys reports on a discovery made during a Los Angeles class fieldtrip—a new species of marine pillbug (Crustacea: Isopoda). While documenting that new species, a second new species of pillbug originally collected 142 years ago by biologists on a wooden sailing ship in Alaska was discovered in a collection room at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) by researchers Adam Wall and Dr. Regina Wetzer.
The Los Angeles discovery was made during a Loyola Marymount University field trip for an invertebrate zoology lab course taught by NHM researcher Dean Pentcheff. The new species wasn't discovered in one of California's pristine Marine Protected Areas, but a dirty, little, rocky beach at the very southernmost tip of the city of Los Angeles—less than a mile from the busiest port in America. "We discovered it clutching on for dear life to one of the five arms of a common sea star," said Pentcheff. "As soon as we saw this bumpy little guy, we knew it was something special that the researchers at NHM had to see, but my class and I had no idea we were looking at a new species."
This newly discovered marine pillbug (or isopod, as it is known to biologists) is directly related to the terrestrial pillbugs found in backyards. Despite their misleading common name, all pillbugs (including the ones in your backyard) are not insects at all. They are crustaceans specially adapted for living on dry land. Pentcheff knew the strange looking animal was an isopod but needed help learning more. He handed the specimen off to world isopod experts Dr. Regina Wetzer, Associate Curator and Director of the Marine Biodiversity Center, and Adam Wall, Assistant Collections Manager for Crustacea at NHM.
"Once we got the specimen to the Museum, we knew it was something unusual. But it was so small that we couldn't just use a normal light microscope to study it. We had to use a scanning electron microscope," said Adam Wall, lead author of the scientific paper describing the new discovery.
"It is amazing to think that you can discover a new species in one of the most urban places in the world like the Port of Los Angeles," says Wall. "What is even better is that it wasn't an older guy wearing a white lab coat or a marine biologist in SCUBA gear that discovered it. It was a group of college students and their teacher in a regular college class—true citizen scientists," said Wall.
Male and female of the newly discovered Los Angeles marine pillbug species, Exosphaeroma pentcheffi named in honor of the teacher that discovered the first specimen on a class fieldtrip. Credit: Kelsey Vo Bailey
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-species-marine-roly-poly-pillbug.html#jCp 
Colorized scanning electron microscope image of the new species from Los Angeles named in honor of the teacher that discovered it on a class field trip, Exosphaeroma pentcheffi. Credit: Kelsey Vo Bailey
Endangered species? Shut down whatever the unions haven’t shut down in the port of LA.
Crazy seeing this article, as I was just doing some cursory internet research on these “bugs.” They’ve been showing up in my house - dead.
Turns out that they are crustaceans, and have internal gills that dry up when air moisture goes away. I had finally started using the AC, and sure enough, it dried out the air just enough.
OMG! The Los Angeles port will be shut down because we have to save the bug.
Send in the Marines!
Most every kid plays with roly-poly bugs at some time in their life................
Maybe we should look at the border areas, find some ‘endangered species’ and let the government and environmentalists fight it out...........
My mom directed a home health agency. And the nurses kept complaining that a bedridden patient was infected with Roly poly’s. They were finding them in every opening.
Eventually they hospitalized the woman and the doctors were laughing at the nurses stories. They stopped laughing when little roly polys were found crawing up the IV tubes.
They cut open the woman’s mattress at her house and it was full of roly polys.
They eventually got them out of the woman’s system.
/Gross but true story mode off
I don't suppose this could have anything to do with the port worker union issues that are going on in the Pacific Northwest.
Quick, have it declared an endangered species and shut down the entire port of Los Angeles!
There ain’t no bugs on me.............
There might be bugs on some of you thugs,
But there ain’t no bugs on me.................oh, wait a minute.............
Bunny huggers to petition gov. moonbeam to shut down the port of LA to save the roly poly’s in 3, 2, 1......
Yes, it sounds crazy....
Unless you live in the bizzaro world known as “california”.
Clearly the bug is an endangered species. Shut down the Port of Los Angeles before they are all gone.
Clearly the bug is an endangered species. Shut down the Port of Los Angeles before they are all gone.
Yes, it sounds crazy?
No, sounds fairly normal.........for California..............
Port? They’ll probably try to shut down the entire Pacific Rim!
“Gross” doesn’t come close to describing that story.
Sickening, vomit-making, disgusting beyond belief, maybe.
Might be good to find the rarest species on the planet and import it to the southern border and then “discover” it!
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