(Re)Discovery Story:

We’d like to introduce you to Psychropotes buglossa – a holothurian, or sometimes called a purple long-tailed sea cucumber, that lives 4,850 m deep in a part of the Atlantic Ocean called the Porcupine Abyssal Plain. This purple squishy-bodied animal is an iconic species for this region, but until recently was the center of a naming crisis. 

This is the story of how Psychropotes buglossa lost and then found its name. It begins when this animal was first discovered and described by the Pierre brothers in 1886 – where they named this species Psychropotes buglossa. But in 1975, another taxonomist decided that 11 previously separate sea cucumber species (including P. buglossa) were all actually one species – Psychropotes longicauda. This continued to be this purple creature’s name for around 40 years until researchers working with molecular data of the Psychropotes longicauda noticed clusters within the genetic data, indicating that this might be more than one species. Three years later in 2020, researchers started to separate some species from the Psychropotes longicauda name and made a statement: the Atlantic species (formerly Psychropotes buglossa) is not Psychropotes longicauda, but they left it at that. This purple sea cucumber was no longer Psychropotes longicauda, but it didn’t have another name either.

Luckily, in 2024, two researchers, Dr. Tammy Horton and Amanda Serpell-Stevens were determined to get this sea cucumber a name again. First, they needed specimens. Since they have been studying the Porcupine Abyssal Plain for over 35 years, they had hundreds in their collection. The researchers picked out the most recent samples, took off their latex gloves and… pet the sea cucumber! This is because sea cucumbers have tiny structures in their skin called ossicles. If a sea cucumber is rough when stroked, the ossicles are still intact. This is important because the ossicles are shaped differently between species. So the researchers examined the ossicles, could tell this was a different species, and confirmed their conclusion with molecular data.

They published a re-description of this sea cucumber with the original name: Psychropotes buglossa. Now this iconic species has its unique name back. With a proper scientific name, researchers like Dr. Horton and Amanda Serpell-Stevens from the National Oceanography Centre, can better study and if necessary, protect species like Psychropotes buglossa. Their current research involves studying population changes over time to better understand the impact climate change has on animals that live in the deep sea.

Learn more about the Porcupine Abyssal Plain Sustained Observatory study and the AtlantiS program.