Marine researchers discover new species on Mandapam coast

NEW DELHI: Researchers from a university in Kerala unveiled a newly discovered marine tardigrade species found in the intertidal beach sediments of the Tamil Nadu coast and named it "Batillipes Chandrayani" in honour of India's inaugural lunar mission, Chandrayaan, which explored the Moon's South Pole.

Scientists S Bijoy Nandan and Vishnu Dattan from the Department of Marine Technology of the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) made the remarkable discovery from the intertidal beach sediments of Mandapam Coast in Tamil Nadu--only the third internationally described organism from India.

"The present species is similar in size to other tardigrades, measuring around 0.15 millimeters (mm) in length and 0.04 mm in width, characterised by four pairs of legs," Nandan told PTI.

He said each of these species has a significant role in ocean life and coastal ecosystems.

"It is extremely difficult to explore these species, as they are too difficult to handle and are bottom dwellers. We need strong international scientific cooperation to study these species, as there is not much expertise in the country with regard to tardigrades," Bijoy said.

Tardigrades, often called water bears, are microscopic, water-dwelling animals. They are well known for their extraordinary resilience and survival abilities in extreme environmental conditions.

"They are one of the toughest animals on earth and have survived all five mass extinctions. They are also the first known animal to survive after exposure to outer space," Bijoy said.

He said this species, ecologically, acts as a pioneer species by inhabiting new developing environments, which will thereby attract other invertebrates to colonise that space.

The new species belong to the phylum Tardigrada, which comprises more than 1,300 described species. Among them, only 17 per cent are marine species.

"Few morphological variations among species and a limited number of differential characters make tardigrade taxonomy challenging and problematic," Bijoy said while speaking about the scientific significance of this new species.

This is the third time a marine tardigrade is described from the Indian waters and also the second time from the east coast.

Earlier, the same research team discovered a marine tardigrade from the south west coast (Stygarctus keralensis) in 2021 and the south-east coast (Batillipes kalami) in 2023.

A paper regarding the latest discovery has been published in the Zootaxa journal.