From charismatic macrofauna to tiny sea squirts, here are some species formally identified by scientists in 2024.
Each year, scientists add thousands of new species to the scientific record in an attempt to get a better count. Some discoveries stem from intrepid adventures deep into the jungle, while others come from reanalyzing old specimens stored in dusty museum collections.
De Oliveira, a tiger-cat expert at Maranhão State University in Brazil, has spent many hours looking at the two described tiger-cats that prowl South America. But the photos in that email, from camera traps in the Andes mountains, struck him as different. The house-cat-sized creature in these photos had more irregular spots, seemingly thicker fur, and just moved differently than the known species, he told NPR.) as a new species.
The beetle was so different that it turned out to be a whole new genus, which is a broader taxonomic classification than species. Tweed and his colleagues named itIts flashy appearance may have evolved to resemble a beetle infected with an insect-killing fungus, Tweed says, which could deter predators."But it's guesswork at this point," he says.
It's topped by Darwin's Orchid, which is also endemic to Madagascar. Upon inspecting the 17-inch-long spur of that specimen in the 1860s, the famed biologist wrote to a friend,"Good Heavens what insect can suck it." Later, he predicted there must be a moth on the island with an equally long proboscis, a prediction of how species can co-evolve. Sure enough, two decades later scientists identified an African hawkmoth that pollinated the orchid.
The frogs were hidden within the palm-like leaves of a pandan tree, and they struck Gabriel as somewhat smaller and differently colored than the species he'd been seeing in his research. He reached out to the author of his guidebook, who confirmed Gabriel's hunch, and they collaborated to describe three new species.
Photos of the spooky sea squirts were circulating online among diving enthusiasts in Japan before Naohiro Hasegawa, a biologist at the University of Hokkaido, saw a tweet with the critters. He knew of no sea squirts with that striking coloration, and he and his colleagues set off to Kumejima, a tiny island west of Okinawa, to collect specimens.
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