The abundance of species present on the planet is enormous, and estimates show that only 20% of them have already been described, that is, everything indicates that Science has just begun to find and catalog all species on Earth. In the midst of a serious crisis of loss of biodiversity, which threatens ecosystems around the world, in 2021 hundreds of new species were discovered.
Only the Natural History Museum in London, for example, identified 552. With international travel restricted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum’s scientists were unable to carry out field searches and therefore concentrated on studying and describing specimens that had already been collected, but had not yet been properly identified and named.
Among them are four new species of dinosaurs. “It’s been a fantastic year for describing new dinosaurs, especially from the UK,” Susannah Maidment, senior paleobiology researcher at the museum, who helped describe some of the new findings, told The Guardian. “Although we have known about the UK dinosaur heritage for over 150 years, the application of new techniques and new data from around the world is helping us to discover a hidden diversity of British dinosaurs,” he added.
But it was not only in Europe that new prehistoric giants were catalogued. In Brazil, scientists have identified the first carnivorous dinosaur found in the city of Monte Alto, considered the land of Brazilian dinosaurs, where several paleontological sites are located. According to studies, the newly discovered kurupi itaata it looked for its prey in the lands of São Paulo and measured about 5 meters in height.
“With the bones we found, in this case the pelvis bone, 3 vertebrae and there are some that we have not yet identified, it was possible to do a phylogenetic analysis, identify which family the animal belonged to and it was also possible to see that it was an animal new,” said Fabiano Vidoi, a paleontologist responsible for the research and co-author of the scientific publication of the finding, which can be read in full in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences (in English).
Also in São Paulo, researchers from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) described the formation of a new plant species, the beach orchid Epidendrum fulgens. The flower is abundant on the coast of SP and on oceanic islands such as the Alcatrazes archipelago, 35 kilometers from the center of São Sebastião.
“For the first time in Brazil, and perhaps in the world, we were able to detect signs of reproductive isolation between populations of a plant on the coast and on the island. We already expected the plants on the island to be genetically different; the finding took place when we tried to cross them with those on the mainland. In addition to the high differentiation, reproductive biology experiments revealed that the island’s plants have lost the ability to reproduce with those on the mainland, indicating that there is a process of formation of a new species in progress”, said Fábio Pinheiro, professor at the Biology Institute (IB-Unicamp) and one of those responsible for the study, linked to a project financed by FAPESP.
In the Amazon, a new species of marmoset was discovered in the region of the “arc of deforestation”, where almost a third of the total deforestation rates are found. baptized of Schneideri monkey, the primate lives in elevated areas in the Juruena and Teles-Pires river basins.
The discovery was made by a team of researchers from the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi and the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT). They described the M. schneideri based on marmosets studied since 1995, but which were wrongly classified as being of the species. M. emiliae.
In the Atlantic Forest, researchers have described and cataloged a new species of frog that is smaller than a 10-cent coin. The new pingo-de-ouro frog was found in the São Paulo stretch of Serra do Mar, which is located around one of the largest metropolitan regions in the world. “[Isso] it shows how much we still have to discover about our biodiversity, even with the advance of cities, even with all the difficulties of conserving, of protecting biodiversity, we still have good surprises”, pointed out biologist Leo Malagoli, manager of Protected Areas of the Fundação Florestal de São Paulo and co-author of the study.
In the world of insects, researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Zoology decided to name new species of ants cataloged this year in honor of Brazilian women. Among those honored in the scientific discovery are councilor and human rights activist Mariele Franco, murdered in 2018, writer Clarice Lispector and soccer player Miraildes Maciel Mota, known as Formiga. Also on the list are Dandara dos Palmares, who was married to Zumbi and worked in the fight against slavery, and Margarida Maria Alves, the first woman to become a union leader in Brazil.
The initiative by entomologist Mônica Ulysséa seeks to draw attention to gender inequality, which also occurs in laboratories, in addition to exalting and recognizing the life and work of incredible women. “Giving names to these animals is also recognizing the diversity that exists in a given space. Knowing this, it is possible to say whether the species is endemic to a region, for example”, stated Mônica to Jornal da USP.
new species around the world
While a species may be new to science, this does not necessarily mean that it has not yet been found by humans or has not been given a name. “Many species new to science are already known and used by people in their region of origin – people who were their primary guardians and often possess unrivaled local knowledge,” Alexandre Antonelli, director of science for the Royal Botanic Gardens, told Mongabay .
This year, researchers concluded that a group of whales in the Gulf of Mexico that looked like Bryde’s whales are actually a new species, which they named Balaenoptera ricei. The discovery was possible thanks to genetic data and the study of the body of a stranded whale. Scientists estimate that only 33 individuals of the new species remain alive and that these whales are threatened by ship traffic, plastic waste and oil and gas exploration in the Gulf.
In the Nimba Mountains of Guinea, West Africa, a group of researchers has found a new species of orange bat that lives in caves and mining tunnels. The species just described was called Myotis nimbaensis and these bats are believed to be in critical danger. According to the Mongabay website, Bat Conservation International and local mining company Société des Mines de Fer de Guinée are working to reinforce tunnels and caves so that bats have a safe home in the mountains.
In 2015, a researcher visited the Peak Wilderness rainforest in Sri Lanka’s central highlands and found an as-yet-uncatalogued plant of the genus Strobilanthes. Known as “Sleeping Beauty”, many of these plants only flower once every 12 years. So, year after year, the researcher returned to this difficult place, waiting for the plant to flourish. Now, your efforts and patience finally paid off: the sleeping beauty flowers Strobilanthes have blossomed and revealed a new species, the Strobilanthes medahinnensis.
In Australia, drag queen Ru Paul was the inspiration to name a new species of super-colored fly. The RuPaul fly is part of a new Australian genus called opaluma (from the Latin words for opal and thorn), and was named Orupau palm. The reason, according to entomologist Bryan Lessard, is that they look like “little gems buzzing on the forest floor.”
The CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) entomologist said the growing practice of naming insects after pop culture icons has helped endangered species gain attention amid environmental crises such as climate change. “There is a new wave of entomologists using pop culture to generate interest in our science and what we do. With forest fire recovery efforts, normally the interest goes to fluffy species like koalas, but many invertebrates do not gain any attention and they are the essential workers of our ecosystem… it is very important that we study them”, he said. the expert to The Guardian.
During one of the lockdowns determined by the Covid-19 pandemic in India, a master’s student began taking pictures of animals around his house and one of the photos posted on a social network caught the attention of a herpetologist, a scholar of reptiles. After scientific investigations, researchers determined that the specimen photographed by chance was actually a new species.
“It is very interesting to note how an Instagram image led to the discovery of a snake so beautiful that it was unknown in the world. Ultimately, people want to travel to remote points of biodiversity to find new or rare species, but if one looks in their own backyard, they could find a new species right there, herpetologist Zeeshan Mirza told Mongabay.