Biologists have described a tiny new species of nematode from an oak forest in Fukushima province, Japan, and named it after the German theoretical physicist Max Planck.

The new nematode, called Pristionchus maxplancki, is the first species to carry the name of the Nobel laureate Max Planck. It is a microscopic threadworm belonging to the genus Pristionchus.

The specimens of Pristionchus maxplancki were collected from the body of a stag beetle found in Fukushima, a prefecture located in the Tohoku region on the island of Honshu.

Dr Natsumi Kanzaki, a biologist from the Japan’s Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, and his colleagues from the Tübingen-based Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology have described the new nematode in a paper accepted for publication in the journal Zoological Science.

According to the Dr Kanzaki’s team, Pristionchus maxplancki is only 1 mm long.

The scientists now plan to study how the complex life cycle, the variety of forms of Pristionchus and other worms, and their global spread are connected – and thereby understand how evolution continues to produce new forms through the interplay of external and internal influences, of habitat and genes.

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Bibliographic information: Kanzaki N et al. 2013. Two new species of Pristionchus (Nematoda: Diplogastridae) support the biogeographic importance of Japan for the evolution of the genus Pristionchus and the model system P. pacificus. Zoological Science 30, in press; doi: 10.2108/zsj.30.000