Oceanography doctoral student Lori Bouck was stumped. The tiny marine animal she was studying looked considerably different under the microscope than it did in textbook pen-and-ink drawings, which purportedly described the wee beast, a common inhabitant of the sand lying at the bottom of saltwater bays. 

After repeated checks, she kept coming back to the same conclusion. She believed that what she was seeing under the electron microscope was something entirely new to science. Last summer, oceanography chair Dr. David Thistle, Lori’s supervisor and an expert in the biology of sediment-dwelling marine organisms, confirmed Lori’s suspicions. She had stumbled onto a brand new species of a large class of marine crustaceans called copepods.

While not earth-jarring news (roughly 10,000 species of copepods are known), discovery of a new species is always a refreshing reminder to biologists and naturalists that there’s plenty left to learn about the animal kingdom. But the find was doubly surprising for its FSU discoverers because until this summer the new organism had escaped their attention despite being right under their noses for years.

As it turns out, the copepod Lori was studying--an organism so familiar to Thistle he called it “our favorite lab rat”--was in fact two distinct critters, kissing cousins to be sure, but a breed apart. The common animal, Zausodes arenicolus, shares its habitat (the space between grains of sand) with the new species, yet to be named.

Both organisms belong to an order called harpacticoid copepods, a non-parasitic group that, unlike their generally larger and free-swimming cousins, lives entirely in bottom sediments. The new organism--about one-50th of an inch long--was found in a sample of sand collected just off the beach near the FSU Marine Laboratory, a 45-minute drive south of campus.

As a group, harpacticoid copepods form a substantial part of the marine food chain, providing energy for a host of larval fishes. The animals are easy to find, says Thistle--there may be a hundred of them in a fistful of saltwater mud or sand. But identifying them takes exceptional patience and skill, talents generally confined to the study of taxonomy, the orderly classification of plants and animals.

Bouck’s discovery should be a step up on her career. Supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research, she’s training to be a professional taxonomist, something of a rare breed in itself these days. For various reasons, few people are going into the field any more, and as a result, in biology labs and museums around the world there’s something of a crisis afoot, says Thistle.