No sooner does Coral Morphologic get bumped off the front page with their video of Periclemenes pedersoni than they post up another HD macro video. This time CoreMore has gone ahead and cataloged a really micro-commensal shrimp that lives only on Ricordea polyps and it could be an undescribed species.
Dr. Richard Heard of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory who was sent some preserved specimens could not match up the sample to any known species of described shrimp from the Caribbean. It has been suggested that the ricordea shrimp could represent a new genus but Collin and I both believe it to be a Periclemenes species. Don’t expect your local Coral Morphologic merchant to carry this diminutive species any time soon; at well under a half an inch long, the Ricordea shrimp is way too small for all but the smallest pico reef tank set ups.
