researcher studying a plebeian snail in Taiwan have just discovered that two distinguishable metal money living on diametric side of a mountain kitchen stove have been mistaken as one for over a 100 . They ’ve named the new speciesAegista diversifamilia , after recent exertion to support equal marriage right around the world . Theworkwas publish inZooKeysthis calendar week .
First key in 1884,Aegista subchinensisis a land snail that ’s only see in Taiwan . It ’s widely distributed across the large island , hold up on the ground or just under the leaf litter in lowland , hardwood woods . About a decennium ago , Yen - Chen Lee ofAcademia Sinicanoticed that the westerly and eastern population — sort by the Central Mountain Range — seem quite different morphologically .
Now , to estimate the divergence and family relationship among closely relatedAegistasnails , Lee and colleagues fromNational Taiwan Normal Universitycollected 50 live snails identified asA. subchinensisfrom 10 sites in Taiwan as well as other species within the same genus from a handful of site throughout Taiwan and Japan . The squad applied three molecular markers to the snail ’ DNA and analyzed all their morphological differences .
show here , eastern snails ( A - eastward ) versus western snails ( F , G ):
The easternA. subchinensis , they regain , is more closely related toA. vermis(which go on Ishigaki Island ) than the westernA. subchinensis . The eastern snail also has a larger shell sizing and flatter shell shape , and they do n’t live north of the Lanyang River . The researcher named the new coinage from eastern TaiwanA. diversifamilia , derived from “ diversus ” ( Latin for different ) and “ familia ” ( Latin for family , adjectival of womanly gender)—in reference to diverse shape of human families .
" When we were train the holograph , " Lee explicate in anews release , " it was a period when Taiwan and many other nation and states were fight for the recognition of same - sex marriage rights . ” These land snail are hermaphrodite animal : Single individuals have both male and distaff reproductive harmonium . “ They represent the diverseness of sex preference in the animal kingdom,”Lee adds . “ We determine that mayhap this is a good occasion to name the escargot to call up the struggle for the acknowledgement of same - sexual urge marriage right wing . "
image : Chih - Wei Huang CC - BY 4.0 ( top ) , Huang et al . , ZooKeys 2014 ( center )
