In springtime, when the rain gathers into pools in Iran’s Dasht-e Lut Desert, the sand comes alive. But when rains come, the eggs unfurl into small, feathery crustaceans called fairy shrimp, the freshwater cousins of brine shrimp. Fairy shrimps live in brief spurts in seasonal ponds throughout the world, from steppes in Mongolia to woodlands in Long Island. So the presence of shrimp in the Lut, while striking, was not entirely out of character. “Fairy shrimps can appear in any place.”The researchers described the new species, Phallocryptus fahimii, this summer in the journal Zoology in the Middle East.

Source: New York Times September 21, 2020 14:00 UTC