In this month's issue of Invertebrate Zoology (vol 120:136-141) you can read about an exciting new species of bdelloid rotifer, Abrochtha carnivora. I rehydrated soil samples from Barbados (courtesy of Claire Fuller and Paul Sikkel), and Pia Hoffmann, an undergraduate in the lab at the time, noticed a gigantic bdelloid rotifer. We asked Claudia Ricci and Giulio Melone to help us identify this species. It turns out this is bdelloid had not been previously described and during the culture of the animal, they were observed eating other rotifers! This is the first report of carnivory in the Bdelloidea. To learn more about bdelloids, visit these websites: http://users.unimi.it/ricci/rotifer.htm by Claudia Ricci; http://eebweb.arizona.edu/Genet/CWB/BirkyLab.html by Bill Birky; http://members.aol.com/bdelloid1/ by Aydin Örstan and http://golgi.harvard.edu/meselson/.







project overview   rotifer information   rotifer anatomy   phylogeny
biogeography   new species   references   systematic database