Chinese scientists discover new species similar to vampire squid in South China Sea

Chinese scientists have discovered a new species similar to the vampire squid in the depths of the South China Sea. (Photo: South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Chinese scientists have discovered a new species similar to the vampire squid in the depths of the South China Sea. The creature belongs to a previously unknown cephalopod from the Vampyroteuthis family.

Researchers from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutions recently published a paper in the English academic journal Zoological Systematics.

The vampire squid - Vampyroteuthis infernalis - is currently the only extant species in the family Vampyroteuthidae. However, specimens from the Gulf of Guinea, Africa, and California suggested the possibility of additional taxa. Here, a second species of Vampyroteuthis, were collected from the South China Sea, the paper said.

Qiu Dajun, a researcher at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained that German marine biologist Carl Chun in 1903 first discovered the ghost squid in the deep sea. It usually lives at depths between 600 and 900 meters, where light can hardly reach and oxygen content in the water is very low.

In September 2016, Chinese scientists collected a specimen at a depth of 800 to 1000 meters in the southeastern sea area close to Hainan Island.

The new species is different from its sibling species Vampyroteuthis infernalis by with an acuate tail. It is characterized by the following combination of morphological characters: a pair of photophores located at the midpoints between the fins and tail, and a lower beak with a broad, elongated wing, the paper said.

Through genetic analysis, they found that it is a new species with a significant genetic distance from the ghost squid on the evolutionary tree, confirming that the collected specimen is a new species and the second known existing species of the Vampyroteuthis family.