18,516 New Species (Including a Fascinating Top Ten) Identified in 2007 - But What Is Their Significance?
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On 22 May the International Institute for Species Research (IISR) of Arizona State University (ASU) released its list of 18,516 new species discovered in 2007. The top ten selected from these is fascinating, but what does it all really mean?
species from the animalia kingdom
The Top Ten List of New Species
The Top 10 New Species List is chosen by a twelve person panel of international taxon experts chaired by Dr. Janine Caira of the University of Connecticut. The species in the list is selected from the thousands of species that were fully described in the calendar year. Nominations from the public, IISE staff and committee members are judged by the committee which has complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria. The object though is to cover a breadth of species attributes and importance.
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A Mushroom on The Campus
Xerocomus silwoodensis - this new mushroom species was discovered in 2006, at Imperial College, London. The discovery of a new species in one of the most intensely studied floras in the world and on the campus of a leading education center for biologists illustrates how poorly species are known.
Natural Decafinated Coffee
Coffea charrieriana - this coffee bean without caffiene was discovered in 2007 in Cameroon, the first record of a caffeine-free species from Central Africa. Cameroon is a center of diversity for the genus Coffea and such wild species are potentially important in breeding programs.
A Deadly Jellyfish
Malo kingi - discovered in 2007, was the second known species of the dangerous box jellyfish one of several genera of irukandji jellyfish. It is named after an American tourist Robert King, who apparently died after being stung by the species while swimming off northern Queensland, Australia. King’s death was a pivotal point in irukandji management, raising public awareness about safety.
A Tall Insect Story
Phobaeticus chani - discovered in 2007 this is the world’s longest insect with a body length of 35.6 fascinating cm (14 inches) and a overall length of 56.7 cm (22.3 inches).
Nothing Sucks Like…
Electrolux addisoni - a fascinating name for this ray discovered in 2006 has vigorous sucking action when feeding “may rival a well-known electrical device used to suck the detritus from carpets” This species is the largest known member of the electric ray family Narkidae, Philautus maia
An 1860s Frog
Philautus maia - This species was identified 2006 from a specimen collected in 1860 which was found on a museum shelf. It and a number of related species from Sri Lanka are almost certainly now extinct. This demonstrates the importance of museum specimens in determining baseline information on biodiversity and in documenting the natural heritage of nations. If this specimen not been collected and stored, it would possibly have never been known.
The State of Observed Species (SOS) Report
But more significant is to consider the implications of the fact the ASU added 18,516 new species to those known to man in 2007. The species are listed and classified in the SOS report. About three-quarters of the new species in 2007 (75.6%) were invertebrates, 11.1% were plants, and only 6.7% vertebrates. More than half the new species (9,411) were insects which have a million described species.
This sounds amazing and makes one wonder if our ongoing well publicised worrying about lost species and decreasing biodiversity is valid. Although its hard to know what’s happening quantitatively conservationists agree we are loosing species at an alarming rate - figures of 25 to 150 a day are spoken about.
The IUCN’s 2008 Red List of Threatened Species lists 44,946 species of which 869 were extinct or extinct in the wild. Probably more worrying is that 16,928 species (38%) are threatened with extinction with 3,246 being Critically Endangered, 4,770 Endangered and 8,912 Vulnerable. But the 44,946 species in the Red List is only a fraction of the approximately 1.8 million known species in the world. Taking a proportional approach would indicate that there are 36,000 identifiable extinct species. But his is small compared to the number of new species being discovered each year, so why the concern? The argument is not valid as the SOS report is not saying there are more species but only that they have identified more. Only once we have identified all known species, of which there are estimated to be between 8 and 14 million, will we know!
Image by Stemonitis in Wikimedia Commons.
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