''Synalpheus pinkfloydi'', the Pink Floyd pistol shrimp, is a species of snapping shrimp in the genus '' Synalpheus''. Described in 2017, it was named after the rock band Pink Floyd, in part because it has a distinctive "bright pink-red claw". The sound it makes by snapping the claw shut reaches 210 decibels, and can kill nearby small fish. The

type material In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes t ...

, collected near the Las Perlas Archipelago, in

Panama Bay The Panama Bay ( es, Bahia de Panamá) is a large body of water off the coast of southern Panama, at . It is a part of the greater Gulf of Panama. Pollution Problems The Panama Bay is considered to be in an eutrophic state by the World Resources ...

, as part of the

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI, es, Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales) is located in Panama and is the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States. It is dedicated to understa ...

's "Comparative and experimental studies of crustacean morphology and development" project, is now in the collections of the

Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo The Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo ( pt, Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, abbreviated MZUSP) is a public natural history museum located in the historic Ipiranga district of São Paulo, Brazil. The MZUSP is an e ...

, and of the

Oxford University Museum of Natural History The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum or OUMNH, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It a ...

. ''S. pinkfloydi'', found on the eastern

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

, is related and visually similar to the western Atlantic '' S. antillensis'' with a 10.2% sequence divergence in the

cytochrome c oxidase subunit I Cytochrome c oxidase I (COX1) also known as mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase I (MT-CO1) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''MT-CO1'' gene. In other eukaryotes, the gene is called ''COX1'', ''CO1'', or ''COI''. Cytochro ...

gene. In a nod to the species' namesake, the paper describing it said it is "unlikely to occur on

the Dark Side of the Moon ''The Dark Side of the Moon'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 1 March 1973 by Harvest Records. The album was primarily developed during live performances, and the band premiered an early version of ...

due to lack of suitable habitat".

References

Alpheidae Crustaceans of the eastern Pacific Ocean Taxa named by Arthur Anker Crustaceans described in 2017 Pink Floyd {{Caridea-stub

See also

References