There’s a new species of Tridacna giant clam that scientists have just “discovered” but guess what? Us reefers saw and noticed a unique clam species many years ago. The newTridacna sp. has not been formally described but was discovered in genetic testing ofTridacna maximaspecimens from across the Indo-Pacific region.
遗传分析显示,在世界卫生大会t is typically considered maxima clams, a second species is hiding in plain sight in populations from Ningaloo, West Australia and the Solomon Islands. Now the new species could be more widespread than that but the Ningaloo reference lines up perfectly with the observations several clam aficionados have remarked about the uniqueness of this clam from Western Australia.
While the genetic analysis research published by Huelsken et al. inPLoS ONEdoes not make any remarks about the appearance of the new clam species, only the genes, we are feeling pretty good that they are talking about thetoothy maxima clamfrom Western Australia with the really warty mantle.
A few years ago LiveAquaria received some of these unusual maxima clams from Western Australia and back then many of us remarked how different they looked. Even Julian Sprung himself called it flat out in a MACNA presentation that this particular clam is probably a new species, and here we have scientists catching up with super sophisticated molecular research techniques.
Since the paper highlighting the discovery of the new “cryptic” species within theTridacna maximais not a description of the clam’s physical appearance at all, we are only speculating that our aquarium observations are lining up with the discoveries in the laboratory. One thing that this paper elucidates for us though is that there is still plenty of discoveries to be made about even the larger more charismatic and culturally significant species of marine life, even the ones hiding in plain sight in the aquarium hobby.
