Hello life: most interesting new species discovered in 2008
A sea horse the size of a pea, the world's smallest snake and a bacterium that lives in hairspray were amongst the wonderful and the weird species discovered on Planet Earth in 2008. The following list, comprising the most wonderful and most weird, was compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists. The top 10 list was chosen from thousands of species found across the globe last year.Institute director Quentin Wheeler said the annual top 10 list helped draw attention to biodiversity, taxonomy and the importance of natural history museums and botanical gardens.
Scientists are still classifying the species found in 2008. Of the 2007 list of 18,516 species named, 75.6 percent were were invertebrate animals, 11.1 percent were vascular plants and 6.7 percent were vertebrates.
The smallest known seahorse was found by a Japanese scuba diving guide in waters off Indonesia. The guide, Satomi Onishi, actually found three new pygmy seahorse species. The smallest, with a standard length of 13.8mm (0.54 inches) and a height of about 11.5mm (0.45 inches), was named after its finder.
The world's smallest known snake, with a total length of 104mm (4.1 inches), was found under a rock at Bonwell, Barbados, Lesser Antilles.
The world's longest insect, with a body length of 35.6cm (14 inches) and a overall length of 56.7 cm (22.3 inches), was found at Ulu Moyog, in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.
A gigantic species and genus of palm with fewer than 100 individual specimens was found in northwestern Madagascar. This plant produces a huge, spectacular terminal inflorescence with countless flowers. After fruiting, the palm dies and collapses. The Tahina Palm is unrelated to any other of the 170 plus palms of Madagascar. Its closest known relatives are in Afghanistan, Thailand, Vietnam and China.
The well-cultivated and tended gardens of Cardiff, Wales, are not places one expects to find a new species. But find one they did, a white slug which has blade-like teeth.
Found at Gunung Rapat, Perak, Malaysia, this species represents a unique evolution in its manner of shell twisting. Most gastropod shells tightly coil according to a logarithmic spiral and have an upper limit of three coiling axes. But the shell of O. vermiculum has four separate coiling axes, the most of any known gastropod.
This fish made the top 10 list through circumstances of its finding — it represented the first taxonomic act of 2008, and was the first act registered in the newly launched taxonomic database Zoobank. The discovery of the new species also highlighted how little is known of deep-reef biodiversity.
Found at Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia, this 380-million year-old fossilized fish is giving birth, making her the oldest known life-bearing vertebrate. The mother fish was given the Latin generic name Materpiscis attenboroughi, in honour of Sir David Attenborough.
A caffeine-free coffee plant found in Cameroon, this is the first record of a caffeine-free species from Central Africa. Cameroon is a center of diversity for the genus Coffea and such wild species are potentially important in breeding naturally decaffeinated beans.
10. Microbacteriaceae
Perhaps the weirdest discovery of 2008 was a bacterium found in hairspray. We tried to get a picture but it refused to smile.
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