Planet Earth has added a few more friends to its list of 8.7 million-known species.
Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences officially identified 229 new plants and animals in 2018 — more than doubling the 85 discovered in 2017.
Over a dozen scientists from the Academy and several dozen international collaborators have identified 120 new wasps, 34 sea slugs, 28 ants, 19 fish, seven flowering plants, seven spiders, four eels, three sharks, two water bears, one frog, one snake and one seahorse.
“Biodiversity scientists estimate that less than 10 percent of species on Earth have been discovered,” Dr. Shannon Bennett, the Academy’s chief of science, said in a statement. “Each species discovery may hold the key to groundbreaking innovations in science, technology, or society and helps us better understand the diversity of life that makes up thriving ecosystems.”
One discovery left researchers so excited they barely noticed an approaching predator.
Academy scientists exploring waters off a remote Brazilian archipelago were so struck by a new, “dazzling” fish, they didn’t realize the huge sixgill shark swimming directly above them.
“This is one of the most beautiful fishes I’ve ever seen. It was so enchanting it made us ignore everything around it,” Dr. Luiz Rocha, the Academy’s curator of fishes, said of discovering the Tosanoides Aphrodite.
The striking neon fish, named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, is one of 18 new fish species that’s been added to Earth’s roster.
And in the southeastern Philippines, a black-and-white striped coral snake with a bright orange tail remains an evolutionary mystery. The venomous Calliophis salitan was first spotted over a decade ago and lives in an area researchers used to believe was only home to blue-tailed snakes.
“The species might be more widespread than we think, there might be close relatives we haven’t discovered yet, or it could be the sole surviving member of a lost lineage,” said Dr. Alan Leviton, an Academy fellow. “Or, maybe orange is just the new blue.”
Other species on the list include a jellybean-sized seahorse called the “Japan pig,” a dwarf false catshark that lives 3,000 feet beneath the ocean’s surface and a new plant with bright-blue berries that blooms along the Samaná Norte River in the Colombian Andes.
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