Tiny Australian leech named for best-selling author Amy Tan
Thursday, January 21, 2016 - 13:44
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Researchers have named a new leech after best-selling author Amy Tan based on an innovative method for peering inside soft-bodied animals. Chtonobdella tanae, a terrestrial leech from Australia, is the first new species of invertebrate without chitinous or calcified tissues (like a shell or exoskeleton) to be described with computed tomography (CT) scanning. The work was recently published in the journal Zoologica Scripta, and opens possibilities for non-destructively studying soft-bodied organisms, a group of animals ranging from worms to jellyfish that represent a huge part of the tree of life.