Saturday 14 October 2006

A bunch of biodiversity

It's been a bumper month so far for uncovering new species of megafauna, charismatic (furred or feathered) or otherwise (scaly or smooth).

A big-headed mouse from Cyprus (Mus cypriacus).

A new subspecies of brush-finch in the Colombian rainforests. Not quite the new species announced on the news services but the tenth subspecies of Atlapetes latinuchus. Science Daily has a story about it or you can read the original description.

A couple of amphibians from the tropics. An Ansonia toad from Malaysia and a tree frog Dendropsophus juliani from Bolivia.

And plenty of fish. Nandus prolixus from the Sepilok River in Sabah on the island of Borneo, two species of Trimma gobies from the Western Pacific and a chimaera, Hydrolagus mccoskeri, from the Galapagos Islands.