In just two months of searching through a remote, mountainous rainforest in Papua New Guinea, scientists discovered 200 new species of animals and plants, including spiders, frogs, insects and mammals.
The surveys were done in 2009 in the Nakanai Mountains on the island of New Britain, which the country has nominated for World Heritage status. The new species could offer a boost to that effort.
“While very encouraging, these discoveries do not mean that our global biodiversity is out of the woods,” Leeanne Alonso of Conservation International said in a press release Oct. 5. “On the contrary, they should serve as a cautionary message about how much we still don’t know about Earth’s still hidden secrets.”
Some of the newly discovered species are truly spectacular, such as the pink-eyed beauty above, one of 20 leaf katydids found in the surveys.
Within the relatively small sample of 42 individuals of the leaf katydids in the Muller Range mountains, scientists Piotr Naskrecki and David Rentz found at least 20 new species.
We’ve got some of the most beautiful, strange and interesting of the new species in this gallery, along with a few very rare ones that hadn’t been seen in the area before.
Captions are adapted from Conservation International, which coordinated the surveys in partnership with Papua New Guinea’s Institute for Biological Research and A Rocha International, with funding from the Hans Wildorf Foundation.
Image: Piotr Naskrecki, Conservation International
Read more and look more pictures in http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/new-species-gallery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz11ftdNPFR