It lives underwater in a limestone tube with an opening at the tip about as wide as a pencil eraser. It’s a species of worm-snail that may never have been seen before, and somehow it turned up in an artificial reef in the Florida Keys. PhotoIn a study published Wednesday in PeerJ, scientists have identified this new species of worm-snail. Researchers like Rüdiger Bieler, a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of the paper, monitor these artificial reefs to see what’s settling in. “When you have them in the living reef,” Dr. Bieler said, “there’s always this kind of death zone around them.”

Source: New York Times April 06, 2017 14:37 UTC