An international research group coordinated by the University of Trieste has discovered a new species of Antarctic shrimp, called Orchomenella rinamontiae .

The name chosen is a tribute to the zoologist Rina Monti , a Lombard professor who in 1907 became the first Italian woman to obtain a professorship (Zoology) at the University of Sassari.

It is a crustacean belonging to the order of amphipods, identified near the Italian Mario Zucchelli Antarctic station by Piero Giulianini, zoologist and professor of the life sciences department of the UniTS , during the XXXIII Italian Antarctic expedition in the Terra Nova bay.

The discovery opens new avenues for research and represents a significant step forward towards understanding marine life and biodiversity in the most remote and inhospitable regions of the planet to monitor global changes due to human activities.

«The initial aim of the research - said the zoologist Giulianini - was to verify the responses of a species of Antarctic shrimp to the warming of the seas. However, morphological and genetic analyzes revealed that some of the samples belonged to a species never described before."

These are "scavenger" shrimps, an endemic and dominant species, which play "a key role in marine communities, consuming and dispersing food", explained the professor.

Shrimp monitoring will allow us to understand "the ongoing anthropic impacts on these delicate ecosystems". «In our laboratories we will conduct analyzes to study how the newly identified species responds to ocean warming», concluded the teacher.

The discovery was possible through technologically advanced research and analysis tools, which could even revolutionize the way in which biological samples are studied and classified. In addition to the University of Trieste and Elettra synchrotron, research groups from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the Canadian Museum of Natural History and the universities of Cosenza and Frascati participated in the study.