European Ostracoda in Australia
Two of the Museum's scientists, Koen Martens and Isa Schön, have spent the last six weeks in Western Australia studying ostrocods in the Kimberley region. “Ostracoda are small crustaceans measuring no more than about 1 mm,” says Koen.
Koen and Isa are a couple and their eight-year-old son Emrys went with them on the trip. Before leaving Perth for the Kimberly region they first wanted to test their equipment. “Emrys wanted to help, so we asked him to go and collect a couple of water samples from a lake in the local park,” explains Koen. “I was certainly not expecting to find anything exceptional, but to my great surprise the samples appeared to contain an European species of ostracod."
"I recognised it immediately as Physocypria, which is common in Belgium but not normally found in Australia.”
It is difficult to explain how it came to be present in the lake. “It is possible that somebody emptied their aquarium fish into the lake and that these ostracods arrived there in that way,” says Koen. “Whenever exotic varieties colonise a new environment there is always the danger that native varieties will be driven out, but to date there is nothing to indicate that this is the case here. Apart from anything else, this notable find shows yet again that life is full of surprises.”