Japan Team Discovers New Species of Crab

January 19, 2018

Tokyo- A team of Japanese researchers has found a new species of crab off the Mukojima islands in Tokyo's Ogasawara chain.

The team, including Ryuta Yoshida, professor at the Marine Coastal Research Center of Ochanomizu University, said Thursday that the newly found crab was named "petankokoyubipinno." Petanko means flat in Japanese.

The shell of the crab is some 3 millimeters long and about 7 millimeters wide, according to the researchers.

The team found the crab during the Tokyo metropolitan government's ecological survey in 2016.

The crab lives with a marine worm in a hole dug by the worm on the sea floor as deep as 10-15 meters. The hole is about 5 millimeters in diameter.

Living with the marine worm is beneficial for the crab because it does not need to make a nest on its own, Yoshida said.

"We need to conduct research in other waters to confirm whether the crab is endemic to areas around the Ogasawara island chain," he added. Jiji Press