More New Species Of Wood-Boring Bivalves

Three new species of this large and surprisingly diverse group (which occurs, as far as is known, only on wood that has sunk to the seafloor) isn’t huge news in and of itself, but these new species were “hiding in plain sight” (albeit in taxonomically mixed groups) in Smithsonian collections for almost 50 years, most all of them having been collected in 1975 by a single person, C. Lamb. As Janet well knows, getting these clams out of wood they have bored into is never easy, so she felt this herculean effort deserved some sort of commemoration. Hence, she named one of the species Xylophaga lambula, based on a single, small specimen (the suffix -ula referring to small, as in little lamb). Above is a scientific illustration of the species by Lisa Kanellos (against a stock background of the deep sea). Through colleagues at the Smithsonian, Janet found out that C. Lamb was one Cathy Lamb, who is alive and well and living in Sweden. The name was bestowed with her blessing, and she was further honored by the illustration at right, created by her sister (who dramatically improved the attractiveness of these boring clams). As Cathy said in an email to Janet “The unique thing about working at a museum is that the work one does still can be relevant even 50 years later. It is special for me to have a new species named by a female curator who is building on the work done by the aforementioned Ruth Turner, who was one of the very first female curators in natural history.” These deep-sea species all occur off the east coast of the United States in the northwestern Atlantic, a fairly well-known area for wood-borers, thanks to the work of Ruth Turner of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. However, these animals occur at greater depths (more than 2000 meters) than do most of those Turner could access. In addition to describing the other new species Xylophaga microdactylus and Xylophaga platyplax, the paper also provides new records of known species, with some supplemental information on morphological characters. Janet also remarks on the remarkable similarity of X. microdactylus to X. microchira, a northeastern Pacific species she described in 2007, which suggests a close relationship between the xylophagaids of the deep northwestern Atlantic and those of the northeastern Pacific. Given the size of the oceans (over 68% of the planet) and that few areas have been as well documented as the west Atlantic, a huge number of additional species of wood borers are likely to be out there, unknown.
August 23. 2024