University of Otago researchers have confirmed a hairworm found on the Rock and Pillar Range, near Dunedin, is a unique species of the parasite, and have christened it Gordionus maori.
Hairworms are known as body snatchers because their water-borne larvae are eaten by a host insect - usually a stonefly or mayfly - which is in turn eaten by a cricket or grasshopper.
The hairworm continues growing within each host animal, before breaking out upon reaching adulthood.
Master of science student Zachary Tobias was attempting to sequence the DNA of hairworm samples he had found at the Rock and Pillar Range, but found the task impossible, Otago Museum natural science assistant curator Anusha Beer said.
''They looked like all the other worms, but the genetic data was not matching any of the known species and they started seeing variations in the data,'' Ms Beer said.
''They eventually figured out that it was probably a new species.''
Mr Tobias' suspicions were confirmed when he consulted his collaborator Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa, a German scientist and leading researcher of hairworms.
An article describing the new species was published in the Journal of Zoology earlier this year, and the holotype - a single type specimen upon which the description and name of a new species is based - has now been lodged with Otago Museum.
The species is too recently discovered for researchers to know if it is common or rare, but some species of hairworm were known to be endangered, Ms Beer said.
''The new species increases our knowledge of New Zealand's amazing native biodiversity and, now formally described, opens avenues for future research on the behaviour, ecology and evolution of these fascinating worms,'' she said.
