Scientists uncover new species of surprising bright-yellow snail in Florida – and identify it after a preferred cocktail

A brand new species of shiny snail found within the Florida Keys has been named after the area’s fashionable cocktail.

The Margarita snail’s distinctive citrus coloring would possibly assist thrust back predators, say scientists.

The Keys, a string of tropical islands stretching about 100 miles off the southern tip of Florida, is dwelling to the one dwelling coral barrier reef within the continental US and lots of animals discovered nowhere else on this planet.

The newly-discovered Margarita snail and its lime-green cousin from Belize are the topic of a brand new research printed within the journal PeerJ.

A brand new species of shiny snail found within the Florida Keys has been named after the area’s fashionable cocktail

Scientists say the marine snails are distant family members of the land-dwelling gastropods usually discovered leaving slimy trails in gardens.

Nicknamed ‘worm snails,’ they spend most of their lives in a single place.

Research lead writer Dr Rüdiger Bieler mentioned: ‘I discover them notably cool as a result of they’re associated to common free-living snails, however when the juveniles discover a appropriate spot to reside, they hunker down, cement their shell to the substrate, and by no means transfer once more.

‘Their shell continues to develop as an irregular tube across the snail’s physique, and the animal hunts by laying out a mucus internet to entice plankton and bits of detritus.’

Dr Bieler has spent the previous 4 a long time finding out invertebrates dwelling within the Western Atlantic, however these explicit snails ‘are so small and so well-hidden that we have not encountered them earlier than throughout our scuba diving surveys.’

He mentioned: ‘We needed to look very intently.’

Dr Bieler, curator of invertebrates on the Discipline Museum in Chicago, says the brand new species belongs to the identical household of marine snails because the invasive ‘Spider-Man’ snail that the identical crew described from the Vandenberg shipwreck off the Florida Keys in 2017.

He and his colleagues, together with fellow Discipline Museum curator Petra Sierwald, got here throughout the lemon-yellow snails within the Florida Keys Nationwide Marine Sanctuary, and so they discovered the same, lime-colored snail in Belize.

The Margarita snail’s distinctive citrus coloring would possibly assist thrust back predators, say scientists

Dr Bieler mentioned: ‘Many snails are polychromatic – throughout the similar species, you get completely different colours.

‘In a single inhabitants, even a single little cluster, one could be orange, one could be grey.

‘I feel they do it to confuse fish and never give them a transparent goal, and a few have warning coloration.’

He added: ‘Initially, after I noticed the lime-green one and the lemon-yellow one, I figured they had been the identical species.

‘However after we sequenced their DNA, they had been very completely different.’

Primarily based on the molecular knowledge, Dr Bieler and his colleagues positioned the snails in a brand new genus, Cayo, after the Spanish phrase for a small, low island.

He defined that the yellow snail was named Cayo Margarita after the citrusy drinks in Jimmy Buffet’s track Margaritaville. The lime snail’s identify, Cayo galbinus, means ‘greenish-yellow.’

Dr Bieler says the Cayo snails have a key trait in frequent with one other worm snail genus, Thylacodes, for which the crew described a brand new species from Bermuda and named Thylacodes bermudensis.

Whereas solely distantly associated, the snails all have brightly coloured heads poking out of their tubular shells.

Dr Bieler mentioned ‘Our thought is it is a warning color.

‘They’ve some nasty metabolites of their mucus. That additionally would possibly assist clarify why they’re in a position to have uncovered heads – on the reef, all people is out to eat you, and if you haven’t any defensive mechanism, you can be overgrown by the corals and sea anemones and all of the stuff round you.

‘It looks as if the mucus would possibly assist deter the neighbors from getting too shut.’

He added: ‘There have been will increase in world water temperatures, and a few species can deal with them a lot better than others.

‘The Cayo snails generally tend to reside on items of useless coral, and as extra coral is killed off, the snails would possibly unfold.

‘It is one other indication that proper below our noses, we have now undescribed species.

‘That is in snorkeling depth in a closely touristed space, and we’re nonetheless discovering new issues throughout us.’