University of British Columbia

If you're swimming in the Salish Sea late at night and feel a skittering along your calves, tiny hairy feet tip-tapping their way higher and higher towards your face, don't worry, it's probably just the stuff of nightmares: hairy-legged, red-eyed sea spiders newly discovered by UBC researchers.

Callipallene pilosuspedes, a species of sea spider newly discovered in the Salish Sea by UBC researchers. (Photo credit: Cormac Toler-Scott.)

Two new sea spider species are the first described in the Salish Sea in almost a century. Their documentation and genetic analysis, published recently in Organisms Diversity & Evolution , helps fill a gap in a poorly understood group of animals.