Ah, an update on my favorite subject: the discovery of new species.
I just received an amazing book by David Brewer entitled Birds New to Science: 50 Years of Avian Discoveries (Helm, 2018). After quoting Ernst Mayr's prediction from the 1940s that there were probably under 100 bird species left to find, Brewer lists 288 for 1960-2018. He then lists 50 "future species" well observed or photographs but not yet described. So around 6 species per year. (They're not spaced out like that, of course.) I'll do a full review on this book later.
Meanwhile, on to sawsharks. Sawsharks are tropical-ocean denizens, up to 1.5m long, with snouts that look like a cross between a sawfish and a gharial (narrow-jawed crocodile) with a little catfish thrown in (it has whiskers). We thought there was one species (Pliotrema warreni) of the type known as the six-gilled sawshark, but after 2020 we know there are at least three. British scientists working with fishers in Zanzibar realized their sawsharks didn't look like the type they knew, and so Pliotrema annae was described. Meanwhile (ok, not strictly 'meanwhile," but you know what I mean), snouts collected in Madagascar were matched with specimens in museums in London and elsewhere, so science already had Pliotrema kajae on ice, as it were, and no one had made a close enough study to distinguish the species. The paper describing the new species is here.
I just received an amazing book by David Brewer entitled Birds New to Science: 50 Years of Avian Discoveries (Helm, 2018). After quoting Ernst Mayr's prediction from the 1940s that there were probably under 100 bird species left to find, Brewer lists 288 for 1960-2018. He then lists 50 "future species" well observed or photographs but not yet described. So around 6 species per year. (They're not spaced out like that, of course.) I'll do a full review on this book later.
Meanwhile, on to sawsharks. Sawsharks are tropical-ocean denizens, up to 1.5m long, with snouts that look like a cross between a sawfish and a gharial (narrow-jawed crocodile) with a little catfish thrown in (it has whiskers). We thought there was one species (Pliotrema warreni) of the type known as the six-gilled sawshark, but after 2020 we know there are at least three. British scientists working with fishers in Zanzibar realized their sawsharks didn't look like the type they knew, and so Pliotrema annae was described. Meanwhile (ok, not strictly 'meanwhile," but you know what I mean), snouts collected in Madagascar were matched with specimens in museums in London and elsewhere, so science already had Pliotrema kajae on ice, as it were, and no one had made a close enough study to distinguish the species. The paper describing the new species is here.
Meanwhile, three species of luminescent sharks, one 1.8m long, were found in depths of 200-1,000 meters off a feature called the Chatham Rise off New Zealand in one expedition.
To close out the fish stories for now, an international team led by Dr. Kim Andrews of the University of Idaho found in the Indo-West Pacific area a new snapper, a gorgeous pink-orange bottom dweller over 1m long. A link to the paper is here.
In mammals, there's news from the top and the bottom of the size scale here in 2021. In the Caribbean, NOAA scientists separated Rice's whale as a species distinct from the similar Bryde's whale. Indian scientists on a volcanic island called Narcondam found a new species of shrew.
We haven't touched on the reptiles, amphibians, cephalopods, and so son, but there's plenty to look at in a future post.
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