Late
Scientist would take months. “We have lost a lot of experts to the reform. But the new generation is coming.”
The investigators were there in a cemetery in Denmark: they collected samples of Lichen and Moss, placed in two separate coffee filters, measured the habitat’s ammonia level, checked GPS readings and recorded the location on a map.
But the task of discovering and identifying species of Tardigrades It was only so fast thanks to the help of almost… 30 thousand children and young people.
They were all school students in Denmark, and they helped scientists from the Denmark Natural History Museum to catalog the tillets, or water bears, and their microhabitats.
O refers a “massive sample of Citizen Science ”: the collaboration of the youngest quadrupled the number of species of known known in Denmark and gave new knowledge about the biodiversity of these animals.
As recently, there are those who say that Tardigrado is the most indestructible animal: it resists high doses of radiation, at extreme temperatures, to total drought, the vacuum of space, for example.
This project in Denmark involved hundreds of schools throughout Denmark, with children who followed accurate instructions and thus collected 8,000 mosses and lichens of parks, forests and other places.
Focused on cemeteries – Places that are the house a wide variety of life, but they are poorly studied habitats.
Researchers needed to collect and analyze thousands of samples to reach (or try to arrive) to a single member of a rarer species of Tardigrado, explains the.
“It would take weeks, or monthsto reach all these islands and islets, ”says Piotr Gąsiorek, the main author of the study. With the students, the rhythm was another.
Gąsorek then discarded low quality samples and those that probably contained “rated rats”, which are common species that were sure they would appear in other samples.
The final set was almost 700 samples high quality ready for later analysis.
In this analysis, they were 55 species identified of Tardigrados, 14 of which already known in Denmark.
But 9 of these species had never been revealed No country.
Highlight for representatives male Of various species, something unusual: it is that many well -known terrestrial threatens are females that reproduce asexually.
At least one of the species now discovered – which has been surprisingly disseminated – will be described in detail, with a full genome; It will not be the first complete genome of a tardy to be sequenced, but will be among the first with male and female individuals.
And there will be much more to explore: the biodiversity of the latest is so little studied that “It is not that difficult to find new species”according to the Polish investigator. But, reinforces, the approach of citizen science was “very innovative”.
After mosses and lichens, the next focus will be many favorable environments To the tardigrados, such as freshwater sediments or the sea.
Regarding small researchers: More than 60% of participating students are now more interested in science than before the study began. It’s just that “they were in nature to do things seriously,” the organization explained.
