New Species News

The leaf-tailed geckos of the genus Uroplatus aren't easy to find. In the jungles of their native Madagascar, this is certainly true, owing to their remarkable ability to meld into…

Remember Indiana Jones’ famous line "Snakes! Why’d it have to be snakes?" in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark? That iconic moment has taken on a new twist…

What do Taylor Swift, Jackie Chan, Adolf Hitler and several Nobel Peace laureates all have in common? Over the past 100 years, they’ve all had plants, animals, or other new-to-science…

A thick-thumbed bat, a color-changing lizard, and a Muppet-looking orchid are just a few of the 380 new-to-science species found and described in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia…

Afromontane forests occur at high altitudes across Africa. They’re thought to be relics of former glacial periods in Africa. Studying genetic data from birds living in these moist temperate forests,…

On April 29, a team of scientists sailed on a research vessel to the chilly waters of the Barents Sea in the Arctic. They aim to find new marine species…

JAKARTA — A group of researchers and citizen-scientists have described a new “semi-slug” species from the lowland rainforests of northern Borneo. The so-called snug, a snail whose external shell is…

In a rare turn of events, scientists have classified a new family of snakes. Just three known species belong to the newly identified Micrelapidae family. Scientists say these reptiles are…

JAKARTA — When scientists made the bombshell announcement in 2017 that the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) was a new species, the apes were immediately put under the global spotlight. With…

COLOMBO — The Sinharaja Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site is a large complex of lowland wilderness that is largely fragmented due to human activity. Walankanda and Viharakanda are…

Michele Menegon and a team of local and international scientists have just described six new species of thumb-sized chameleon in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains. The forest-capped mountains form an inland…

With its blood-red eyes and red, black and yellow scales, the Marley’s Snail-eating snake looks like it could end your life with a bite. But this delicate snake, Sibon marleyae,…

While exploring a cave in Timor-Leste, a small island nation sandwiched between Indonesia and Australia, scientists saw a gecko dashing across the limestone. Because the cave was so remote, said…

During the 16th century, European traders sailed to the Maluku Islands, in what is today eastern Indonesia, seeking spices like nutmeg, cloves and pepper. The traders also found something else…

Up in the pure water streams of the tropical Andes dwells a fantastic little creature painted with patches of color. This small wonder, the Rio Negro stream tree frog (Hyloscirtus…

A worldwide international collaboration is locating tropical areas with high concentrations of plants not yet identified by science, then working with local communities to conserve those plants and their habitats.

Up in Tanzania’s Ukaguru Mountains, researchers have found a new-to-science frog species with a unique trait: it doesn’t make a sound. The small, silent Ukaguru spiny-throated reed frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis)…

Newly described bat from Mozambique mountain under threat, researchers say A forest that harbors Mozambique’s most recently identified species of mammal could disappear within the next two years as small-scale…

KATHMANDU — If you were a grumpy cat, you’d probably want to avoid company. And if you were the world’s grumpiest, as David Attenborough once described the elusive manul, what…

A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula,  an anemone that rides on a back of a hermit crab, and the world's largest waterlily are…

KATHMANDU — Throughout 2022, Mongabay reported on important biodiversity-related scientific discoveries in Nepal. The stories, some of them republished by different media outlets in Nepal and abroad, brought the country’s…

KATHMANDU–  When German professor Jochen Martens and his associate W. Schawaller visited subtropical forests in Nepal in 1988, they collected samples of different insects found in eastern Nepal, including a “bizarre”…

A group of researchers have identified several new species of sunbirds, whose range spans from Africa in the west and Australia in the east, in the tropical Wakatobi Islands in…

KATHMANDU — Dashain, in Nepali Hinduism, commemorates the victory of the goddess Durga over the demon Mahishasura. It’s a multiday holiday in the Himalayan country, the biggest one of the…

On a mountaintop in Ecuador, a researcher spotted some spots. The polka-dotted frog, it turned out, was new to science and has now been named Hyloscirtus sethmacfarlanei in honor of…

In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…

KATHMANDU — This past July 20, Radha Krishna Rijal noticed a strange animal struggling in the drainage channel of his house in the Parshyang neighborhood of western Nepal’s Pokhara Valley.…

On the northern tip of Madagascar, scientists have described eight new-to-science species of geckos, all about the length of your thumb. For decades, scientists have studied the Lygodactylus madagascariensis species…

Nestled in a valley between two volcanoes, Donald Varela-Soto heard something unfamiliar. For six months, he searched for the source of a shrill frog call along the edge of a…

KATHMANDU — When zoologist Bivek Gautam and members of his team were on an expedition to look for the Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus) in 2020 in the forests of eastern…