根据古代玛雅人的说法，分散在墨西哥和中美洲水池中的洞穴网络是通往地下世界的通道。生物学家发现，这些水体中居住着一种神秘的生物——科学界所知的第一种有毒的甲壳动物。
Speleonectes tulumensis属于浆足类动物，研究小组在1981年对该物种进行了第一次描述。在其自然栖息地观察这些苍白的、没有视力的微小动物是非常困难的，因为它们生活在对导航的潜水员来说危险重重且如迷宫般复杂的洞穴网络之中。尽管如此，英国伦敦自然历史博物馆的研究人员Bjorn von Reumont 和Ronald Jenner等生物学家，还是发现了这些浆足虫抛掉的许多空空的虾壳，根据推测这是它们在吃虾后遗留下来的。
2007年，研究人员就已经发现这些动物前钳的结构就像皮下注射针头一样。他们推测，这些动物能够通过该结构将某些东西注射到猎物体内。研究证明，这个想法是正确的，von Reumont 和Jenner将报告发表在《分子生物学与变迁》上。研究人员发现：这些附着于针形结构的贮液囊周边都是肌肉组织，这样一来，它们就可以通过针形结构来泵吸液体。此外，他们还发现位于这些浆足虫身体中心位置的腺体能够产生毒液，同时它们还被连接到贮液囊。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐的英文摘要
Molecular Biology and Evolution doi: 10.1093/molbev/mst199
The first venomous crustacean revealed by transcriptomics and functional morphology: remipede venom glands express a unique toxin cocktail dominated by enzymes and a neurotoxin
Bjorn M. von Reumont, Alexander Blanke, Sandy Richter, Fernando Alvarez, Christoph Bleidorn and Ronald A. Jenner
Animal venoms have evolved many times. Venomous species are especially common in three of the four main groups of arthropods (Chelicerata, Myriapoda, Hexapoda), which together represent tens of thousands of species of venomous spiders, scorpions, centipedes and hymenopterans. Surprisingly, despite their great diversity of body plans there is no unambiguous evidence that any crustacean is venomous. We provide the first conclusive evidence that the aquatic, blind and cave-dwelling remipede crustaceans are venomous, and that venoms evolved in all four major arthropod groups. We produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of the venom delivery apparatus of the remipede Speleonectes tulumensis, showing that remipedes can inject venom in a controlled manner. A transcriptomic profile of its venom glands shows that they express a unique cocktail of transcripts coding for known venom toxins, including a diversity of enzymes and a probable paralytic neurotoxin very similar to one described from spider venom. We screened a transcriptomic library obtained from whole animals and identified a non-toxin paralogue of the remipede neurotoxin that is not expressed in the venom glands. This allowed us to reconstruct its probable evolutionary origin, and underlines the importance of incorporating data derived from non-venom gland tissue to elucidate the evolution of candidate venom proteins. This first glimpse into the venom of a crustacean and primitively aquatic arthropod reveals conspicuous differences from the venoms of other predatory arthropods such as centipedes, scorpions and spiders, and contributes valuable information for ultimately disentangling the many factors shaping the biology and evolution of venoms and venomous species.
