May 23 2014 : Mirror (Mumbai)
TOP TEN SPECIES OF 2014
An appealing carnivorous mammal, a 12-meter-tall tree that has been hiding in plain sight and a sea anemone that lives under an Antarctic glacier are among the species identified by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry's (ESF) International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) as the top 10 species discovered last year.An international committee of taxonomists and related experts selected the top 10 from among the approximately 18,000 new species named during the previous year and released the to coincide with the birthday, May 23, of Carolus Linnaeus, an 18th century Swedish botanist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy.
The annual list, established in 2008, calls attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct faster than they are being identified.
Scientists believe 10 million species await discovery, five times the number that are already known to science. MM LEAF-TAILED GECKO Location: Australia It's not easy to spot this gecko, which has an extremely wide tail that is employed as part of its camouflage. Native to rain forests and rocky habitats, this gecko is a bit of a night owl. It is found on rocks and trees as it waits for prey. TINKERBELL FAIRYFLY Location: Costa Rica The tiny size and delicately fringed wings of the parasitoid wasp family Mymaridae led to their common name: fairyflies. Tinkerbella nana, named for Peter Pan's fairy sidekick, measures just 250 micrometers and is among the smallest insects. The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in at LaSelva Biological Station in Costa Rica. KAWEESAK'S DRAGON TREE Location: Thailand Standing 12 meters tall, it's hard to believe the dragon tree went unnoticed this long.
Beautiful, soft, sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream-colored flowers with bright orange filaments are the hallmarks of this impressive plant. The dragon tree is found in the limestone mountains of the Loei and Lop Buri Provinces in Thailand. ORANGE PENICILLIUM Location: Tunisia Distinguished by the bright orange colour it displays when produced in colonies.
It was isolated from soil in Tunisia. It also produces a sheet-like extra-cellular matrix that may function as protection from drought. DOMED LAND SNAIL Location: Croatia Living in complete darkness nearly 3,000 feet below the surface in the Lukina JamaTrojama caves of Croatia is the Domed Land Snail. This snail lacks eyes and it has no shell pigmentation giving it a ghost-like appearance. Even by snail standards, it moves slowly, creeping only a few millimeters a week. Researchers suspect these snails, measuring only 2mm in length, travel in water currents or hitchhike on cave animals, to travel longer distances. OLINGUITO » Location: Ecuador The appealing olinguito, resembling a cross between a slinky cat and a wide-eyed teddy bear, lives secretively in cloud forests of the Andes mountains in Colombia and Ecuador. It is an arboreal carnivore, that weighs in at about two kilo grams. It is the first new carnivorous mam mal described in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Its apparent dependence on cloud forest habitat means deforestation is a threat. CLEAN MICROBES ROOM Location: USA Found in frequently sterilised rooms where spacecraft are assem bled, this resilient mi crobial species could potentially contaminate other planets that the spacecrafts visit. SKELETON SHRIMP Location: USA This tiny shrimp, the smallest in the genus, has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male's body measures just 3.3 millimeters; the female is even smaller at 2.1. AMOEBOID PROTIST Location: Mediterranean Sea This one-celled organism is four to five centimeters high, making it a giant in the world of single-celled creatures. It gathers pieces of silica spicules and uses them like so many Lego blocks to construct a shell. ANDRILL ANEMONE Location: Antarctica It's a species of sea anemone that lives under a glacier in Antarctica. The creature is tiny, less than 2.5cms long with most of its pale yellow bodies burrowed into the ice shelf and their roughly two dozen tentacles dangling into the frigid water below.
The annual list, established in 2008, calls attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct faster than they are being identified.
Scientists believe 10 million species await discovery, five times the number that are already known to science. MM LEAF-TAILED GECKO Location: Australia It's not easy to spot this gecko, which has an extremely wide tail that is employed as part of its camouflage. Native to rain forests and rocky habitats, this gecko is a bit of a night owl. It is found on rocks and trees as it waits for prey. TINKERBELL FAIRYFLY Location: Costa Rica The tiny size and delicately fringed wings of the parasitoid wasp family Mymaridae led to their common name: fairyflies. Tinkerbella nana, named for Peter Pan's fairy sidekick, measures just 250 micrometers and is among the smallest insects. The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in at LaSelva Biological Station in Costa Rica. KAWEESAK'S DRAGON TREE Location: Thailand Standing 12 meters tall, it's hard to believe the dragon tree went unnoticed this long.
Beautiful, soft, sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream-colored flowers with bright orange filaments are the hallmarks of this impressive plant. The dragon tree is found in the limestone mountains of the Loei and Lop Buri Provinces in Thailand. ORANGE PENICILLIUM Location: Tunisia Distinguished by the bright orange colour it displays when produced in colonies.
It was isolated from soil in Tunisia. It also produces a sheet-like extra-cellular matrix that may function as protection from drought. DOMED LAND SNAIL Location: Croatia Living in complete darkness nearly 3,000 feet below the surface in the Lukina JamaTrojama caves of Croatia is the Domed Land Snail. This snail lacks eyes and it has no shell pigmentation giving it a ghost-like appearance. Even by snail standards, it moves slowly, creeping only a few millimeters a week. Researchers suspect these snails, measuring only 2mm in length, travel in water currents or hitchhike on cave animals, to travel longer distances. OLINGUITO » Location: Ecuador The appealing olinguito, resembling a cross between a slinky cat and a wide-eyed teddy bear, lives secretively in cloud forests of the Andes mountains in Colombia and Ecuador. It is an arboreal carnivore, that weighs in at about two kilo grams. It is the first new carnivorous mam mal described in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Its apparent dependence on cloud forest habitat means deforestation is a threat. CLEAN MICROBES ROOM Location: USA Found in frequently sterilised rooms where spacecraft are assem bled, this resilient mi crobial species could potentially contaminate other planets that the spacecrafts visit. SKELETON SHRIMP Location: USA This tiny shrimp, the smallest in the genus, has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male's body measures just 3.3 millimeters; the female is even smaller at 2.1. AMOEBOID PROTIST Location: Mediterranean Sea This one-celled organism is four to five centimeters high, making it a giant in the world of single-celled creatures. It gathers pieces of silica spicules and uses them like so many Lego blocks to construct a shell. ANDRILL ANEMONE Location: Antarctica It's a species of sea anemone that lives under a glacier in Antarctica. The creature is tiny, less than 2.5cms long with most of its pale yellow bodies burrowed into the ice shelf and their roughly two dozen tentacles dangling into the frigid water below.
