The State University of New York College (SUNY) of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) has published a list of the “Top 10 New Species” of 2015, as selected by an international committee of taxonomists.
The committee behind the list sifted through approximately 18,000 new species named last year and out of the thousands of possibilities, they selected just 10 new species.
The list of the top 10 new species discovered last year, not ranked but in alphabetical order, are as follows:
- Feathered Dinosaur (Anzu wyliei)
- Coral Plant (Balanophora coralliformis)
- Cartwheeling Spider (Cebrennus rechenbergi)
- The X-Phyla (Dendrogramma enigmatica)
- Bone-house Wasp (Deuteragenia ossarium)
- Indonesian Frog (Limnonectes larvaepartus)
- Walking Stick (Phryganistria tamdaoensis)
- Sea Slug (Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum)
- Bromeliad (Tillandsia religiosa)
- Pufferfish (Torquigener albomaculosus)
For those wondering what the strange looking creature is at the top of the page, it’s the sea slug known as Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum.
The list of the top 10 new species was released in such a manner as to coincide with the May 23 birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, who is recognized as the father of modern taxonomy.
Linnaeus was an 18th-century Swedish botanists whose work began the modern naming and classification of plants and animals.
While nearly two-million species of plants and animals have already been named, there are those who believe that we may be losing species as quickly as we’re discovering them. Quentin Wheeler, the founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE), is one of those people as he was quoted by National Geographic as having said that he’s “concerned that with the biodiversity crisis happening, we are losing species at least as fast as we are discovering them” and that the “importance of this list” is derived from its ability to draw “attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct at an alarming rate.”
I’m concerned that with the biodiversity crisis happening, we are losing species at least as fast as we are discovering them (…) The importance of this list is that it draws attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct at an alarming rate.
In other coverage of recently discovered new species of life here at Immortal News, researchers discovered three new dwarf dragon species deep in the cloud forests of South America, a third seadragon species known as the ruby seadragon, a couple of new peacock spiders down in Australia, and 30 never-before-seen species of flies in Los Angeles.
