New Species

Shantanu Joshi is fascinated with creatures of all kinds, but especially damselflies, the small quick fliers of the order Odonata. In this episode he takes us deep into the forests of Northeast India, a place of immense beauty and interfering colonial history. Undersampling and poor specimen quality are a few reasons the diversity of this area is not well known, and Shantanu and his coauthors are...

What if I told you that the oldest known biotic association of arthropods is a piece of Lebanese amber from the Cretaceous period? At the same time that flowering plants were diversifying, astigmatid mites were finding a very convenient way to get around: on the backs of termites. Can mites and termites be friends? How does one identify a tiny mite specimen without damaging its equally-important h...

Sunflowers come in all shapes and sizes, and the group has gained a new member. Nicknamed the “woolly devil,” Ovicula biradiata is the product of the amazing bi-national collaboration between taxonomists, conservationists, and community scientists in Big Bend National Park. But it comes at a time when the future of National Parks is uncertain. “I think this particular discovery has inspired a lot...

Someone who identifies as a nature lover might not be excited to see trees cut down or large machines rolling across the forest floor. Science doesn’t always align with everyone’s expectations, and often scientists have to explain their work to audiences that aren’t interested or who don’t agree. Ethan Tapper has many of these conversations. Ethan works to manage Vermont forests sustainably and he...

Amanda and I discuss and review Bats! (1999)   Our ratings: Enjoyability: 🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇 Accuracy: 🦇🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇 This episode is the first in a new bonus series where I watch B-list horror movies with scientists and we rate them on accuracy and enjoyability. All episodes are free, for future episodes you will just have to sign up through Patreon at Patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod . If you choose to support...

On an expedition to Madagascar, Matjaž Gregorič and his research team came upon a damaged termite nest that had a few other invertebrate visitors. When they experimentally damaged the nest again, they found two unexpected things: spiders ballooning in to prey on the termites as they rebuilt, and hopeful ants standing by to steal termites from those spiders. It created what the authors called “a pe...

Rodrigo’s paper “Idiopyrgus Pilsbry, 1911 (Gastropoda, Tomichiidae): a relict genus radiating into subterranean environments” is in November 8th issue of Zoosystematics and Evolution It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.136428 A transcript of this episode can be found here: Rodrigo Salvador - Transcript Follow Rodrigo on X/Bluesky: @Kraken_Scholar and @krakenscholar.bsky.social Fo...

What happens when a hymenopterist finds a mysterious arachnid in a Danish hothouse? Sean Birk Bek Craig was exploring the floor of a hothouse, also known as a greenhouse, when he came upon an interesting creature. “I could see that it was an arachnid when I looked up close,” he said, “but immediately just looking at it with my eyes… I was really perplexed about what the devil that was!” Short-tail...

In this episode, Danniella Sherwood brings us two new pseudoscorpions from Ascension Island, one of the most remote islands in the world. Ascension’s ecological history is full of many twists and turns, and it is home to amazing biodiversity that is in desperate need of conservation. Danni and her team worked together to address this need, producing a paper titled ‘David and Goliath’ with one very...

This paper started because Chloé Löis Fourreau and Marcos Teixeira were both too sick to dive during a NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) bioblitz expedition in the Red Sea. Hoping to at least collect something, they swam to the shoreline and began snorkeling in the shallow water. When they began turning over rocks, what felt like a wasted day turned into an amazing intertidal discover...

Louis Nastasi has a deep love of wasps, and a particular fascination with Cynipid wasps, gall wasps that can specialize on just a few plants or even a single species. In this episode he tells us about their diversity and the tangled phylogenies he works on, and answers the question his paper poses; “Cryptic or underworked?” There’s so much we don’t know about gall wasps, and it has so many implica...

What can tiny, flightless beetles tell us about the history of mountain geography and climate? It turns out, quite a bit! In this episode, Dr. Adam Haberski introduces us to the wild world of Staphylinid beetles, some of the most diverse creatures on the planet. We learn about the joys (and pitfalls) of collecting in the Southern Appalachians, as well as their billion-year-old history and the amaz...

In part 3 of Taxonomy Basics, Marc Milne of the University of Indianapolis tells us all about the process of identifying and publishing new species. He has tips and tricks for microscope work, finding online resources, and many other facets of the description process. Marc is a spider taxonomist and ecologist who specializes in several different groups including Linyphiids and Nesticids. He is als...

In part 2 of Taxonomy Basics, Ashleigh Whiffin of National Museums Scotland brings us into the entomology collection to learn the fundamentals of curation and preservation, including which pins to use, the importance of collection data, and much more. Ashleigh is responsible for the care and development of a collection of 2.5 million insect specimens. She is particularly interested in collections...

In part 1 of Taxonomy Basics, Evan Waite from Arizona State University teaches us all about collecting entomological specimens. From which traps to use to tips on sharing your collection with others, Evan gives us all of the details with some great stories along the way. Evan is a coleopterist and PhD Candidate at Arizona State University. His work focuses on ground beetles, but he’s broadly inter...

“Another spider paper?!” you might ask. “More new spiders, what’s so interesting?” Well in addition to a revised genus and three new species, Adrià Bellvert and Miquel Arnedo’s most recent publication highlights some of the unique challenges taxonomists deal with as they work to untangle species relationships. “I think that the important part [of this paper] is it interfaces very well, it summariz...

Skinks are one of the most diverse families of lizards, and Ishan Agarwal studies skinks in India, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. From the forest to the lab to the museum, Ishan shares his experiences investigating a group of cryptic skinks that had quite a few surprises to share, including biology and behavior. What is it about skinks that makes them so captivating? How and wh...

Mike Stephan is a lawyer obsessed with scientific etymology, specifically tautonyms, binomial names in which the generic name and species name are exactly the same. Scientific naming conventions and customs have a rich history, and as Mike says, “[taxonomic names] in some perhaps unintended way tell the greater story of human anthropology and history.” Come along for the ride as we discuss etymolo...

There are no snakes in Alaska, so what’s that snakelike shape crossing the road? Few people would guess it’s actually thousands of fly larvae moving in a very peculiar pattern that gives the snakeworm gnat their common name. Dr. Thalles Pereira and his coauthors spent lots of time rearing, observing, and sharing their findings with their community in the process of describing this new species, and...

This is a short episode to share some thoughts and feedback from this year's New Species community survey, as well as some updates on what is to come for the podcast. Take the community survey here before March 1st: https://forms.gle/ayoZfXzadr2kd3st5 Check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod And the Website: www.newspeciespodcast.net

Who wouldn’t want to receive thousands of millipedes in the mail? When Dr. Henrik Enghoff does it’s through his partnership with FoRCE, the Forest Restoration and Climate Experiment, a group researching tropical forest dynamics and their relationship with things like human disturbance and climate change. They collect millipedes through their field season and Henrik identifies them to increase our...

How many nature enthusiasts can relate to this scenario: you’re watching the landscape go by as you drive, and suddenly you see an area that could be favorable habitat for your target species. Stop the car! That’s what Prakrit Jain did, and it helped him and his coauthors describe a new species of Paruroctonus scorpion from the San Joaquin Valley. So much makes this scorpion interesting, from the...

Southern Africa is home to over 1,200 species of irises, and if that number doesn’t blow you away, hearing Dr. John Manning’s speak about his new species certainly will. In this fascinating episode we are taken on a deep dive into Iridaceae’s stunning pollinator-driven diversity, evolution over millions of years and several continents, and the critical role of herbaria as the backbone of science p...

Dr. Catalina Romero-Ortiz has been fascinated by pseudoscorpions for over a decade, and she wants everyone to understand how amazing they are. But beyond inherent scientific value, Catalina wants to share the importance of taxonomy in and out of the lab. She says, “As scientists, all of us are called to- there are some things that don’t work, you know? I think we [hold] in our shoulders much of th...

What do glaciers and scorpions have in common? They’re the focus of Javier Blasco-Aróstegui’s paper in which he and his coauthor describe a new species from the foothills of Mount Olympus. It’s an area home to many legends, and also a surprising amount of biodiversity due to its unique topography. When a large-scale change in habitat restricts gene flow, it can result in species that are very diff...