Sometimes It's Good News: Recent New Discoveries

A cheerful post today about some of the new species that have been discovered recently around the world. And for those of you who think that the only animals left to discover are creepy crawlies, I will encourage you to carry on reading by pointing out that the new discoveries include not one, but two monkeys.

Night monkey (Aotus sp.) by Alexander Pari

With frequent news about drowning polar bears, rainforest destruction and virulent diseases, biology may seem like a depressing subject, but a few recent species-hunting expeditions show that there is still hope for the animal kingdom.

In September last year came the exciting news of a new species of monkey, the lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a type of guenon, an Old World monkey, like baboons and macaques.

October then heralded the announcement of the discovery of another monkey, this time a night, or owl, monkey from Peru. The new monkey has not even been named yet, but is one of eight mammals discovered in the Tabaconas Namballe National Sanctuary in the expedition between 2009-2011. This is a pretty impressive haul given that current research suggests that only 2% of mammal species remain undiscovered.

Enigmatic porcupine (Coendou baturensis) by Alexander Pari

Other discoveries include the common shrew opossum, small-eared shrew and the brilliantly-named enigmatic porcupine. The finding of the night monkey is also made all the more important by the conservation status of the night monkey group; it is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. In Peru specifically, night monkeys are endangered, so the discovery of this previously-unknown species brings hope that there may be more hiding in these forests.

Entoloma aff. pupurea by Luis Morgado

Another September expedition, across the Pacific on Mount Kinabalu in northern Borneo, discovered over 160 new species of plant, animal and fungus in just two weeks. The area is of particular interest because of the high levels of endemism, meaning that many of the new species are found nowhere else in the world. The populations on Mount Kinabalu are completely isolated on the top of the mountain so have evolved separately from organisms elsewhere on Borneo, in the same way as other strange life found on islands.

The main aim of the expedition in fact was to collect DNA samples in order to investigate the patterns of evolution found in this unique ‘Heart of Borneo’; the new discoveries were simply an added bonus.

Many of the new species are fungi, but there were many new spiders and bugs too, and even possibly a new species of frog. And although mushrooms may not be everyone's passion, they were particularly exciting to the expedition researchers because so many of them have not been studied yet. According to expert Jozesf Geml, the fungi come in "an endless variety of shapes and colours that sometimes are truly breathtaking" and described the area as an 'El Dorado' for mushrooms.

While finding new species does not help those in danger of extinction, such expeditions show that we still has much to learn about the diversity of life on Earth.