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GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK — An eyeless, white and brand new species of freshwater shrimp has been discovered in water at the bottom of a deep cave in Great Basin National Park.
The White Pine amphipod is endemic to only one cave at the park and joins other species that occur only at the park located just over the Nevada border from Utah. Two millipedes and a pseudoscorpion are among the other species that are unique to the park.
"We don't expect it to have a distribution greater than the Snake Range," said cave biologist Steve Taylor of the Illinois Natural History Survey. "It is highly unlikely to occur in adjacent mountain ranges."
Taylor is the lead author of an article describing the shrimp that was recently published in Subterranean Biology.
"The whole genus is eyeless and white, and they live in underground waterways," that apparently have to have a set of specific conditions for the tiny creature to survive, Taylor said.
"We had to make several trips into Model Cave, crawling over one quarter-mile each way, in order to have just the right water levels to find this amphipod," said park ecologist Gretchen Baker.
The park's acting superintendent, Tod Williams, said the new discovery underscores the need to protect unimpaired habitats as much as possible "as we are still learning about what lives in them."
Park officials say the White Pine amphipod will join other species this summer to be highlighted during the park's Biodiversity Discovery days Aug. 1-3.
E-mail:aodonoghue@ksl.com
