Posts Tagged ‘insect’
Caffeine-free coffee, world’s longest insect on list of new species
A pea-sized seahorse, the world’s longest insect, a “ghost slug” and the world’s smallest snake were among the top 10 species discovered in 2008. These unusual critters were among thousands of species found last year, many in remote or tropical regions of the planet, that hint at the breadth of the Earth’s undiscovered biodiversity.
“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list.
“We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted,” Wheeler added.
The ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists — scientists devoted to species exploration and classification — compile the top 10 list of new species each year.
Also on the 2008 list are a caffeine-free coffee plant, a snail whose shell twists around four axes, a palm that flowers itself to death and microscopic bacteria that live in hairspray.
