Scientists from the Central Agricultural University and the Zoology Department of the Mahatma Gandhi (MG) College, Thiruvananthapuram, have discovered a new species of freshwater shrimp from the Karamana river here. The new species has been identified and named as Macrobrachium snpurii.
The finding, made by P M Pillai, registrar of the Central Agricultural University and V Unnikrishnan of the Zoology Department of the MG College, has been published in the latest edition of the journal ‘Zootaxa’ published from New Zealand.
The same authors had described two other new species of prawns earlier, Macrobrachium madhosoodhani and Macrobrachium prabhakarani. The present species, Macrobrachium snpurii, has been named so as to honour the Vice-Chancellor of Central Agricultural University, S N Puri and is dedicated to his outstanding contributions to the development of agricultural education in India.
Puri is currently the president of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) in which the vice-chancellors of 446 Indian universities are members.
The scientists have studied both morphology as well as genetics of the newly described species. The gene sequences of Macrobracium snpurii has been compared with 15 genetically-related species to study evolutionary inter-relationships.
Besides, the molecular structure and the bar code has been published in the Gen Bank of the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).
The new species show molecular characteristics that are similar to that of Macrobrachium rosenbergii, the giant shrimp species with high aquaculture potential.
