Taiwanese Tiger Mantis Shrimp Discovery

A new species of mantis shrimp, Lysiosquilloides taiwanica, was recently discovered from Taiwan using scuba diving, and is only the fourth known species of Lysiosquilloides worldwide. Significantly, tiger mantis shrimps are very difficult to capture, living in deep seabed burrows and rarely coming out. A diver must be very observant to find the burrows and very patient to capture the animal. Even in our case, the specimen lost one of its claws during capture. 
Lysiosquilloides taiwanica is one of the tiger mantis shrimps, family Lysiosquillidae, so-named because of their beautiful stripes. The family contains 20 species, including the largest of all mantis shrimps, Lysiosquilla maculata, reaching almost 40 cm long. We used phylogenetic analysis to determine how the 20 species of tiger mantis shrimps are related and discovered they belong within only two genera (Lysiosquilla and Lysiosquilloides), instead of three as previously thought.

Read the full article, published by Zoological Studies, here

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