Emperor Showa Has Collected Samples of New Marine Species: Research Team

March 10, 2018

Tokyo- The late Japanese Emperor Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Showa, was found to have collected samples of a new basket star species in the 1930s and 1950s, a research team led by the University of Tokyo said Friday.

Basket stars belong to the genus Astrodendrum, a type of echinoderm, such as sea stars and sea urchin. Astrodendrum groups live on the ocean floor 40 to 1,300 meters deep and mainly eat plankton by stretching out their tentacles.

Masanori Okanishi, project assistant professor at Misaki Marine Biological Station of the university, said the new species is 5.3 centimeters in diameter and was named Astrodendrum spinulosum.

According to Okanishi, team members, also from the National Museum of Nature and Science, first studied characteristics of known Astrodendrum groups by observing specimens kept at museums abroad. Then they compared the features with those of samples they gathered off Japan's Mie and Iwate prefectures between 2009 and 2017 as well as specimens collected by the late Emperor, a biologist, and held by the national museum.

As a result, 11 specimens, including seven the Emperor Showa picked in Sagami Bay, southwest of Tokyo, in 1930-35 and 1950-58, were found to be those of a new species.

Details of the research outcome were published by the New Zealand animal taxonomy journal Zootaxa on Friday. Jiji Press