It’s a warm August afternoon, and a gentle breeze rustles the firs and sugar maples at the Rochester Museum & Science Center's Cumming Nature Center in Naples. Judy Dobles, a retiree from Kodak's finance department and now volunteer at the Nature Center, walks a trail she said she's traversed hundreds of times.
There's always something new to find, she said.
"Globally, we are probably eliminating species faster than we can find them," Dobles said. "In the soil, and at the microscopic level, there's so much we don't know."
About a year ago, Dobles collected a sample of moss from a log in the nature center and placed it under a microscope. She found the typical, expected assortment of microbes.
But then she saw something different: A tardigrade, a microscopic animal commonly known as a water bear or a moss piglet due to its soft, rotund appearance, that didn't resemble any that she'd seen before.
In fact, it was one no one had ever seen before.
"There's 2 million species on Earth that are currently named, and there could be 8 million. Some people think there's even more than 8 million; that number is very squishy," Dobles said. "There's so much out here we don't know."
Dobles consulted with Piotr Gasiorek, an assistant professor at Jagellonian University in Poland who specializes in the study of tardigrade biodiversity, to formally recognize the new species. It took about a year for the finding to be made official.
There are about 1,500 known species of tardigrades. Prior to Dobles' research at the Cumming Nature Center, there were 12 recognized in New York. There are now 27, including the newly discovered species. The others were species that Dobles found at Cumming that had previously been discovered in other places.
Tardigrades are eight-legged creatures with a maximum length of just over a millimeter, invisible without the aid of a microscope. They typically feed on plant cells, but some species are entirely carnivorous, consuming other microscopic animals or even other tardigrades.
Tardigrades are a lesser studied taxa of animals, but they are notable for their extreme endurance. Specimens have been shown to be able to survive exposure to boiling water, extreme pressure, starvation, and complete dehydration. They’re found in habitats as varied as the deep sea, tropical rainforests, and Antarctica.
In 2007, the Russian FOTON-M3 space mission exposed a sample of tardigrades to the vacuum of space for 10 days. When returned to Earth and rehydrated, the tardigrades sprung back to life.
Dobles consulted with Jamie Jacobs, a member of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation's Turtle Clan who has dedicated his life to preserving the Onondowa'ga language. He came up with the name Mesocrista Ojagwaji, the former word referring to the tardigrade's genus, and the latter an Indigenous language reference to the tardigrade's spotting. It's a deviation from traditional scientific naming conventions, which typically use Latin etymology.
Dobles said it was a way to pay honor to the roots of the land the nature center now rests on.
"I will say that everybody I talk to is always asking me, 'Why didn't you name it after yourself?' And I'm like, 'Why would I?'" Dobles said. "For me, it's more fun to partner with other people and involve them in the process. And make that connection."
For the Nature Center, Dobles' discovery is a testimony to the vastness of nature, and how much there is left to find.
“Judy inspires all of us to do science exactly where we are," said Sarah Jacoby Murphy, the nature center’s director. "There is so much left to learn about our immense and intricate planet, and each one of us has the capacity to contribute to scientific knowledge in ways large and small.”
