The International Institute for Species Exploration has announced the top ten new species discovered during 2014. This year, the list includes a variety of different species, ranging from a penicillium fungus and an amoeboid protist to the large dragon tree and a new carnivorous mammal. Others on the list include a shrimp, a snail, a gecko, an anemone, and a fairyfly.
Arguably, those of most interest are:
The skeleton shrimp (Liropus minusculus), collected from an island off the coast of Southern California, is the smallest of the Liropus shrimp, boasting a translucent body that is less than 3.5 millimeters long.
Kaweesak’s dragon tree (Dracaena kaweesakii), found in the limestone mountains of Thailand and Burma, is a large tree, measuring in at 12 meters (nearly 40 feet), with tufts of sword-shaped leaves and off-white and orange flowers. Researchers estimate that just 2,500 of these trees exist today.
The olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina), discovered in Ecuador, is the first new species of carnivorous mammal identified in the Western Hemisphere in more than 30 years. This arboreal fur-ball lives in the cloud forests of the Andes, where local deforestation may be a threat to the species.
In addition to these, in the world of mammals, scientists have found several new species of saki monkeys, three new species of marsupials, four new species of gopher-like rodents, and a tiny elephant shrew. The tiny species of elephant shrew, also called a round-eared sengi, was discovered in Africa’s Namib Desert and earned the title of the smallest member of the order Macroscelidea.
On a smaller scale, Nature World News has announced that a team of scientists have discovered 30 news species of spider and that there are probably hundreds more waiting to be identified. Keeping with the smaller lifeforms, scientists from the University of Delhi have discovered 14 new species of ‘dancing frogs’ in the Western Ghats mountain range in southern India.
In terms of changing species, one of the world’s largest sea anemones, with tentacles measuring more than 2 meters long, was found, in fact, not be an anemone at all. Instead researchers discovered this year, it belongs to an order unto itself. The species is now called Relicanthus daphneae—and a regrouping, with the organism now falling into an entirely new order within the subclass Hexacorallia.
