Scientist names new sea animal after his grandmother

A scientist in Japan has found a new kind of small sea animal. It lives on the tail fins^*1 of fish. He has named it after his grandmother.

The scientist is Ryota Kawanishi. He is an associate professor^*2 at Hokkaido University of Education, a university in the north of Japan. He works at its campus in the city of Kushiro. He announced the discovery^*3 on September 4, 2026. His paper was published online one day earlier in Species^*4 Diversity. This is an English-language journal^*5 of the Japanese Society of Systematic Zoology.

The animal is a crustacean^*6, like a crab or a shrimp, but it is small and flat. It belongs to a family of crustaceans that live on fish. More than 380 species of this family are known around the world, in 46 groups. More than 40 of them live in Japan.

Kawanishi found the new species on two kinds of fish, the white croaker^*7 and the Japanese whiting^*8. The fish were caught in the eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea, a sea between the main islands of Japan. They came from the water near Awaji Island, from Osaka Bay, and from the water off Tokushima.

The new species looks like a known species in the same group, but there are differences. It has three light brown lines on its back. Also, the inside part of its tail leg has an edge like a saw.

Its scientific name is Nerocila domotoae. The second word comes from Chiyoko Domoto, Kawanishi's grandmother. She told him that this animal is often seen on white croakers near the coast of Osaka. Its Japanese name is Chiyokoban. "Chiyo" is from her first name, and "koban^*9" is from the Japanese name of the group.

Domoto and Kawanishi promised to go and collect the animals together. But she died before they could do it. Now the little animal carries her name.

1. *1 fins: the thin parts on a fish's body that it uses to swim
2. *2 associate professor: a teacher and researcher at a university
3. *3 discovery: finding something that nobody knew about before
4. *4 species: one kind of animal or plant
5. *5 journal: a magazine where scientists publish their research
6. *6 crustacean: an animal with a hard shell and many legs, like a crab or a shrimp
7. *7 white croaker: a kind of sea fish that lives near Japan
8. *8 Japanese whiting: a kind of small sea fish that lives near Japan
9. *9 koban: a small gold coin used in old Japan