Top 10 new species for 2014
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.
The International Institute for Species Exploration, founded in 2007, has a selection committee of taxonomists and related experts who pick the top 10 species out of thousands of species discovered each year.
(Caption information provided by The International Institute for Species Exploration.)
Kaweesak's Dragon Tree
Standing nearly 40 feet tall, it's hard to believe the dragon tree went unnoticed this long.
It is found in the limestone mountains of the Loei and Lop Buri Provinces in Thailand and may also be found in nearby Burma.
ANDRILL Anemone
A species of sea anemone, living under a glacier on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, raises questions by its very existence. It is not clear how the species withstands the harsh conditions in its habitat. It is the first species of sea anemone reported to live in ice.
It was discovered when the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) sent a remotely operated submersible vehicle into holes that had been drilled into the ice. This revealed the presence of small creatures, less than 2.5 centimeters long (one inch) with most of their pale yellow bodies burrowed into the ice shelf and their roughly two dozen tentacles dangling into the frigid water below.
Skeleton Shrimp
This tiny shrimp, the smallest in the genus, was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on thew island of Santa Catalina, off the coast of Southern California.
The new species has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male's body measures just 3.3 millimeters (about an eighth of an inch); the female is even smaller at 2.1 (less than a tenth of an inch).
Orange Penicillium
The newcomer was isolated from soil in Tunisia. This species also produces a sheet-like extra-cellular matrix that may function as protection from drought.
Leaf-tailed Gecko
It's not easy to spot this gecko, which has an extremely wide tail that is employed as part of its camouflage. With longer limbs, a more slender body and larger eyes than other Saltuarius species, this one has a mottled coloration that allows it to blend in with its surroundings. Native to rainforests and rocky habitats, this gecko is a bit of a night owl. It is found on the vertical surfaces of rocks and trees as it waits for prey. Surveys of similar habitat near the area where this species was found did not reveal additional populations, so this may be a rare species. The gecko was discovered on rocky terrain in isolated rain forests of the Melville Range of northeastern Australia.
Amoeboid Protist
This species was discovered in underwater caves 30 miles off the southeast coast of Spain. Interestingly, they are the same caves where carnivorous sponges were first discovered.
Clean Room Microbes
There are some things we don't want to send into space and the newly discovered clean room microbes are among them. Found in rooms where spacecraft are assembled, this microbial species could potentially contaminate other planets that the spacecraft visit. Tersicoccus phoenicis was independently collected from the floors of two separate clean rooms around 2,500 miles apart, one in Florida and one in French Guiana. While frequent sterilization reduces the microbes found in clean rooms, some resistant species persist that can tolerate extreme dryness; wide ranges of pH, temperature and salt concentration; and exposure to UV light or hydrogen peroxide. This work was performed in collaboration with Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (USA), University of Regensburg (Germany), Leibniz-Institute DSMZ (Germany) and California State University Los Angeles (USA).
Tinkerbell Fairyfly
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 0.00984 inches and is among the smallest insects.
It is the latest addition to the 1,400 or so known species of the family. The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in secondary growth forest at LaSelva Biological Station in Costa Rica. Although its host is not yet known, like other fairyflies it presumably has a life span of not more than a few days and attacks the eggs of other insects.
Domed Land Snail
Living in complete darkness nearly 3,000 feet below the surface in the Lukina Jama-Trojama caves of western Croatia is Zospeum tholussum, this land snail lacks eyes as they're not necessary in the total darkness of the caves, and it has no shell pigmentation giving it a ghost-like appearance. Only one living specimen was collected in a large cavern among rocks and sand with a small stream of running water nearby, however many shells were also found in the area.
Even by snail standards, Zospeum tholussum moves slowly, creeping only a few millimeters or centimeters a week. Researchers suspect these small snails, measuring only 0.08 inch in length, travel in water currents or hitchhike on other cave animals, such as bats or crickets, to travel longer distances.