Top 10 New Species - 2012

On May 23, 2012, the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and a committee of scientists from around the world announced their picks for the top 10 new species described in 2011. On this year’s top 10 new species list are a sneezing monkey, a beautiful but venomous jellyfish, an underworld worm and a fungus named for a popular TV cartoon character. The top 10 new species also include a night-blooming orchid, an ancient walking cactus creature and a tiny wasp. Rounding out this year’s list are a vibrant poppy, a giant millipede and a blue tarantula.

1.

Name: Rhinopithecus strykeri  
Common Name: Sneezing Monkey
Family: Cercopithecidae
Etymology: strykeri is named in “honor of Jon Stryker, President, and Founder of the Arcus Foundation.”
Locality: Maw River area, northeastern Kachin state, northeastern Myanmar

Rhinopithecus strykeri is the first snub-nosed monkey to be reported from Myanmar and is believed to be Critically Endangered. It is distinctive for its mostly black fur and white beard and for sneezing when it rains – although it tries to avoid dripping rainwater in its turned up nose by sitting with its head between its legs.

2.

Name: Tamoya ohboya
Common Name: Bonaire Banded Box Jelly
Family: Tamoyidae.
Etymology: ohboya is named “Oh Boy!!!” after the reaction that someone could have when first encountering this species.
Locality: Divi Flamingo, Bonaire, Netherlands (Dutch Caribbean)

This strikingly beautiful but venomous box jelly has had so many sightings since 2001 that it had a common name before being officially described in 2011 after the capture of a specimen in 2008.The sightings of this new species remind us of the opportunities for citizen scientists to participate in species exploration. More than 300 entries were submitted in an online competition to name this new species and hundreds of votes were cast to select ohboya as the winner, a name suggested by high school biology teacher Lisa Peck. Ms. Peck presumed people must exclaim “Oh Boy!” when they first encounter this amazing jelly – including swimmers, scuba divers, scientists, and even doctors who have treated victims of its serious stings.

3.

Name: Halicephalobus mephisto
Common Name: Devil’s Worm
Family: Panagrolaimidae
Etymology: mephisto in reference to the Faust legend of the Devil “because the new species is found at a depth of 1.3 km in the Earth’s crust.”
Locality: “collected from shaft 3, level 26, corridor 28 of Beatrix gold mine, South Africa, approximately 1 km north of shaft 3 (28 ͦ 149 24.0699 S, 26 ͦ 479 45.2599 E).”

Measuring about 0.5 mm in length, these tiny nematodes are the deepest-living terrestrial multicellular organisms on earth. Discovered at a depth of 1.3 km (8/10 mile) in a South African gold mine, this species is remarkable for surviving immense underground pressure as well as high temperatures (37o C / 98.6 o F). According to the authors, carbon dating indicated that the borehole water where this species lives had not been in contact with the earth’s atmosphere for the last 4,000 to 6,000 years. The discovery of H. mephisto in Earth’s deep subsurface is also significant because it may have important implications for the discovery of life at similar subterranean depths on other planets.

4.

Name: Bulbophyllum nocturnum
Common Name: Night-blooming Orchid Family: Orchidaceae
Etymology: nocturnum from the Latin word meaning “at night” to reflect the orchid’s night-time blooming.
Locality: New Britain, Papua New Guinea

  

A slender night stalker is one way to describe this rare orchid from Papua New Guinea whose flowers open around 10 at night and close early the next morning. It was described by scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Leiden University, who named it Bulbophyllum nocturnum from the Latin word meaning “at night.” It is believed to be the first night-blooming orchid recorded among the more than 25,000 known species of orchids.

5.

Name: Kollasmosoma sentum
Family: Braconidae
Etymology: sentum is from the Latin word, sentus, meaning “thorny” or “spiny” to reflect the “thorn-like spine of the fifth sternite of the female.”
Locality: Institute for Agriculture and Food Research and Technology, Madrid, Spain.

Ants beware! This new species of parasitic wasp cruises at just one centimeter (less than half an inch) above the ground in Madrid, Spain, in search of its target: ants. With a target in sight, the teensy wasp attacks from the air like a tiny dive bomber, depositing an egg in less than 1/20 of a second. A video of the wasp, named Kollasmosoma sentum, dropping an egg on its target.

6.

Name: Spongiforma squarepantsii
Common Name: Spongebob Squarepants Mushroom 

Family: Boletaceae

Locality: Lambir Hills National Park, Sarawak, island of Borneo, Malaysia

Named Spongiforma squarepantsii, after the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, this new fungi species looks more like a sponge than a typical mushroom. One of its characteristics is that its fruiting body can be squeezed like a sponge and bounce back to its normal size and shape. This fungus, which smells fruity, was discovered in forests on the island of Borneo in Malaysia.

7.

Name: Meconopsis autumnalis

Common Name: Nepalese Autumn Poppy

Family: Papaveraceae

Etymology: autumnalis to reflect the autumn season when the plant flowers.

Locality: Ganesh Himal (Rasuwa District), central Nepal

 

This vibrant, tall, yellow poppy found in Nepal may have gone undescribed because of its high mountain habitat (10,827 to 13,780 feet). Named Meconopsis autumnalis for the autumn season when the plant flowers, there is evidence that this species was collected before but not recognized as new until intrepid botanists collecting plants miles from human habitation in heavy monsoon rains made the “rediscovery.”

8.

Name: Crurifarcimen vagans
Common Name: Wandering Leg Sausage
Family: Pachybolidae

Etymology:  genus name Crurifarcimen from the  Latin words “crus” for leg  and “farcimen” meaning sausage; species epithet vagans from the Latin word “vagans” meaning  wandering or itinerant; thus, the full species name means the “wandering leg sausage.”

Locality:  Tanga Region of Tanzania

 

A giant millipede about the length of a sausage bears the common name “wandering leg sausage,” which also is at the root of its Latin name: Crurifarcimen vagans. The species holds a new record as the largest millipede (16 centimeters or about 6.3 inches) found in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains. The new species is about 1.5 centimeter (0.6 inch) in diameter with 56 more or less podous rings, or body segments bearing ambulatory limbs, each with two pairs of legs.

9.

Name: Diania cactiformis
Common Name: Walking Cactus Family: belongs to the extinct class Xenusia
Etymology: Diania is named for Dian, a Chinese linguistic abbreviation of Yunnan where the species was found; cactiformis refers to the animal’s cactus-like form.
Locality: Yunnan, southwestern China

Although this new species looks more like a “walking cactus” than an animal at first glance, Diania cactiformis belongs to an extinct group called the armoured Lobopodia, which had wormlike bodies and multiple pairs of legs. The fossil was discovered in Cambrian deposits about 520 million years old from southwestern China and is remarkable in its segmented legs that may indicate a common ancestry with arthropods, including insects and spiders.

10.

Name: Pterinopelma sazimai

Common Name: Sazima’s Tarantula 

Family: Theraphosidae

Etymology: sazimai is named in honor of Dr. Ivan Sazima “an important Brazilian zoologist who was the first researcher to collect exemplars of this species in the decades of 1970 and 1980. These specimens remained as the sole exemplars of the species known for a long time.”

Locality: Parque Nacional da Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil

Breathtakingly beautiful, this iridescent hairy blue tarantula is the first new animal species from Brazil to be named on the top 10 list. Pterinopelma sazimai is not the first or only blue tarantula but truly spectacular and from “island” ecosystems on flattop mountains.

Source: species.asu.edu