For 20 years, researchers snorkeled through rivers across the southern U.S., feeling along muddy bottoms for mussels. Many of the shells they pulled up looked like familiar species, but their DNA told a different story. Scientists from Shedd Aquarium, Arkansas State University, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have described five new species of freshwater mussels from rivers in the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, in a study published in Zootaxa. Several are rare and confined to single river basins, the authors write. “Our discovery and descriptions of these new freshwater mussel species demonstrate how much we still have to learn about the biodiversity in our rivers,” Nathan Johnson, a study co-author and research biologist at the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, said in a press release. Mussels are hard to identify from their shells. For example, mussels in headwater streams tend to grow flatter shells, while the same species downstream grow rounder ones. Males and females differ as well. So the researchers turned to genetics. In many cases, they clipped a bit of tissue or took a swab, then returned the mussel alive to the river, according to the study. The team sequenced three genes and compared more than 440 shell outlines. Each major river basin turned out to hold its own genetic lineage. Researchers named the new species for where they live. The Mobile hickorynut (Obovaria sipseyensis) is named for Alabama’s Sipsey River, from a Choctaw word meaning “swamp.” It now survives only…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Off the coast of Cornwall in southwest England, a pole rises from a buoy with a pair of big eyes on top. The head spins, creating what researchers call an “animated eye effect.” Its job is to scare away seabirds away before they dive into the fishing net below. On other nets, a kite shaped like a bird of prey flies from a pole. According to a new study in Conservation Letters, both devices reduced the chance that diving seabirds would drown in gillnets. Nets fitted with the kites had 71% lower odds of catching an auk, the bird family that includes guillemots and razorbills. Nets fitted with the buoys had 59% lower odds. “People may enjoy seeing seabirds around our coasts, but very few witness the moment when a diving bird encounters fishing gear,” lead author Tom Horton, a research fellow at the University of Exeter, told Mongabay. Razorbills are among the seabirds that get caught in fishing nets. Thousands of birds are die in fishing nets each year. Image courtesy of Nina Constable. Gillnets are a major threat to diving birds because the birds forage underwater, where they can get tangled in the mesh, the authors write. Gillnets in the Baltic Sea and Northeast Atlantic kill more than 95,000 seabirds a year, according to a 2024 review. Across all European fisheries, about 31,000 common guillemots (Uria aalge) die as bycatch each year, the same review found. Fixes have been hard to find. An earlier trial of the eye…This article was originally published on Mongabay

A sea cucumber with two horn-like appendages sits on the mud in the deep South Atlantic Ocean. Scientists named it Loki, after the horned Norse trickster god. Loki lives 2,577 meters (8,455 feet) below the surface, nearly eight Eiffel Towers deep. Loki (Peniagone sp.) is one of 57 species new to science that researchers identified from Argentina’s Mar del Plata Canyon, according to the Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census. The team also found five new genera. It took them two weeks. “The deep sea holds some of the least understood ecosystems on Earth,” Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, said in a press release. A standout discovery of the workshop, this striking deep-sea holothurian (sea cucumber) was named “Loki” for its prominent horned appendages, reminiscent of the god in Norse mythology. Captured in high-definition in-situ video and images on the seafloor of the Mar del Plata Submarine Canyon, it represents one of up to 10 new holothurian species uncovered during the Argentina workshop. Image courtesy of ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute. Most of the specimens came from a 2025 expedition that turned the deep sea into must-watch TV. That July and August, the research vessel Falkor (too) sent a remotely operated vehicle named SuBastian into the canyon and livestreamed the dives. More than 4 million people tuned in live, according to Ocean Census. Many came for a plump orange sea star that looked like Patrick Star from the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick, it turns out, is not a…This article was originally published on Mongabay