By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science
Contributor | March 3, 2017 06:55am ET
A new worm discovered on the
Iberian Peninsula is missing something: a penis.
The tiny nematode, found in a
compost pile, mates without penetration. Instead, it pumps a capsule full of
sperm out of an opening in its body and into a funnel-like structure on the
female's vulva. From there, the sperm enter the female's reproductive tract to
fertilize her eggs.
"We are sampling [the whole]
Iberian Peninsula from several decades ago, and we never found a similar
species, and, [with] respect to other countries, it is very rare that other
researchers find some species of this genus," Joaquín Abolafia, a
biologist at the University of Jaén and the discoverer of the new species,
wrote in an email to Live Science. "For that reason, this discovery is
surprising."
Second skin
The worm is unlike other
nematodes in ways other than its weird genitals. (More commonly, nematode males
have penis-like
organs called spiculesthat the animals use to penetrate females.)
This newfound worm also has two layers of skin, or cuticle, one of which comes
from the worm's juvenile moult. Instead of fully shedding the skin, the
creature keeps the layer attached. This second skin protects the worm from drying
out in the arid summers of the Iberian Peninsula, the researchers reported in
December in the
journal Zootaxa.
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