Blind shrimp a 'missing link’?

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 20

Blind shrimp a 'missing link’?

NZPA-AP Tallahassee A tiny, blind shrimp that likes to swim upside down and has no apparent means of reproduction could be a “missing link” in crustacean evolution, according to a pair of researchers. The creature, which has been found in Hawaii, Bermuda, and volcanic Ascension Island in the Atlantic, lives in cracks of underwater passageways and marine caves within 45.7 m of lava formations on shore. A team of researchers from the Smithsonian Institution discovered some of the shrimp swimming in a small saltwater pool on Ascension Island in 1972. The tiny, blind crustaceans migrated to the surface through an underwater passageway.

The shrimp has puzzled scientists because it seems to exist in an evolutionary warp, exhibiting characteristics of both primitive and modern shrimp. “It’s the missing link in

shrimp evolution,” Dr Bruce Felgenhauer of Florida State University said in a recent interview. “It’s a fairly unusual creature.” So far the creature, no bigger than a thumbnail, has prompted some theories, but questions persist 7 about how it reproduces.

Like primitive shrimp, it has highly segmented mouth parts, many gills, and a well developed internal stomach. But unlike ancient ancestors, it has no pincers. The shrimp is blind, having long ago lost the use for eye stalks. Tides battering the tiny, cave-dwelling creature against the walls of its passageway habitats could have made eye stalks a liability. Dr Felgenhauer and Dr Larry Abele, chairman of the university’s department of biological sciences, theorise that the shrimp originate in very deep-sea waters, which also cbuld explain its blindness.