AsianScientist (May 26, 2011) – The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and a committee of taxonomists from around the world have announced their picks for the top 10 new species of 2011.
On this year’s top 10 new species list are a leech with enormous teeth, an iron-oxide consuming bacterium discovered on a rusticle from the RMS Titanic, a batfish flat as a pancake that appears to hop in the water, and fungi that emit bright yellowish-green light from their gel-coated stems.
The top 10 new species also include a jumping cockroach, a six-foot long fruit-eating lizard, and a duiker first encountered at a bushmeat market in Africa.
Rounding out this year’s top 10 are a cricket that pollinates a rare orchid, a mushroom that fruits underwater, and an orb-weaving spider named for Darwin that builds webs large enough to span rivers and lakes.
From the Philippines, at 6 feet 6 inches in length, a frugivorous (fruit-eating) monitor lizard, found in the Northern Sierra Madre Forest on Luzon Island, is the longest species to make this year’s top 10. Weighing only 22 pounds, this species is brightly colored with stripes of gold flecks. Its scaly body and legs are a blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots and its tail is marked in alternating segments of black and green.
Named Varanus bitatawa, the Sierra Madre Forest Monitor or Golden Spotted Monitor lizard spends most of its time in trees and has become a flagship species for conservation in the Philippines.
(Source: International Institute for Species Exploration)
An international committee of experts, chaired by Mary Liz Jameson, an associate professor at Wichita State University, selected the top 10 new species for this year’s list.
The top 10 new species were chosen from thousands of new species discovered in 2010, to help draw attention in a fun-filled way to biodiversity and the field of taxonomy, explained Quentin Wheeler, an entomologist who directs the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University.
“We can only realistically aspire to sustainable biodiversity if we first learn what species exist to begin with. Our best guess is that all species discovered since 1758 represent less than 20 percent of the kinds of plants and animals inhabiting planet Earth,” said Wheeler.
“A reasonable estimate is that 10 million species remain to be described, named, and classified before the diversity and complexity of the biosphere is understood,” he said.
The May 23 announcement coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who was responsible for the modern system of plant and animal names and classifications. The 300th anniversary of his birth was celebrated worldwide on May 23, 2007.
Since Linnaeus initiated the modern systems for naming plants and animals in the 18th century, an estimated 2 million species have been named, described, and classified. Scientists estimate there are between 10 million and 100 million species on Earth, though most set the number closer to 12 million.
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Source: International Institute for Species Exploration.
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