New Species News

June 13, 2025

Top Headlines

The Global Rule That Predicts Where Life Thrives—and Where It Fails

June 10, 2025 — What if all life on Earth followed a surprisingly simple pattern? New research shows that in every region, species tend to cluster in small hotspots and then gradually thin out. This universal rule applies across drastically different organisms and ...

How Madagascar’s Lizards Became the Island’s Last Hope for Reforestation

June 10, 2025 — After millions of years of evolutionary isolation, Madagascar developed an unparalleled array of wildlife, and recent research has uncovered an unsung ecological hero: the lizard. Though often ...

Eating an Array of Smaller Fish Could Be Nutrient-Dense Solution to Overfishing

June 3, 2025 — To satisfy the seafood needs of billions of people, offering them access to a more biodiverse array of fish creates opportunities to mix-and-match species to obtain better nutrition from smaller ...

Two Plant Species Invent the Same Chemically Complex and Medically Interesting Substance

June 3, 2025 — The biosynthesis of the great variety of natural plant products has not yet been elucidated for many medically interesting substances. In a new study, an international team of researchers was able to ...

Discovery of a New Marine Flagellate

May 29, 2025 — Researchers have identified a previously unknown species of unicellular organism in seawater collected near Hachijojima Island. The newly discovered species, named Viscidocauda repens, belongs to the protist group Endomyxa and is notable for ...

Nordic Studies Show the Significance of Old-Growth Forests for Biodiversity

May 27, 2025 — Researchers conducted a systematic review of 99 scientific publications that compared the flora or fauna of old-growth forests, managed forests and clearcut sites in boreal Europe. The reviewed studies showed large differences in the species ...

Yeast Reveals How Species Adapt to a Warmer Climate

May 21, 2025 — How do organisms adapt to climate change? A new study reveals the complex interplay between genetic diversity and temperature tolerance ...

Mystery of 'Very Odd' Elasmosaur Finally Solved: Fiercely Predatory Marine Reptile Is New Species

May 23, 2025 — A group of fossils of elasmosaurs -- some of the most famous in North America -- have just been formally identified as belonging to a 'very odd' new genus of the sea monster, unlike any previously ...

Different Phases of Evolution During Ice Age

May 23, 2025 — Cold-adapted animals started to evolve 2.6 million years ago when the permanent ice at the poles became more prevalent. There followed a time when the continental ice sheets expanded and contracted and around 700,000 years ago the cold periods ...

Scientists Describe 71 New Australian Bee Species

May 19, 2025 — A team of researchers has discovered 71 new native bee species belonging to the resin pot bees, or Megachile (Austrochile), which are unique to Australia and present in every state and territory except ...

Human Activity Reduces Plant Diversity Hundreds of Kilometers Away

May 15, 2025 — Natural ecosystems comprise groups of species capable of living in the specific conditions of a biological system. However, if we visit a specific natural area, we will not find all the species capable of living in it. The proportion of species that ...

Should We Protect Non-Native Species? A New Study Says Maybe

May 14, 2025 — A new study found that over a quarter of the world's naturalized plant species are threatened in parts of their native range -- raising questions about the role non-native populations may play in global conservation ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:03pm EDT

Australia's Oldest Prehistoric Tree Frog Hops 22 Million Years Back in Time

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have now discovered the oldest ancestor for all the Australian tree frogs, with distant links to the tree frogs of South ...

A Plant You've Never Heard of Can Do What Scientists Once Thought Impossible

May 13, 2025 — A new study shows that an unassuming plant has some very unusual family ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 — Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical ...

Database Reveals Vital Ocean Links to Aid Conservation

May 8, 2025 — Scientists have launched an interactive global map to show the migratory patterns of more than 100 marine species in an effort to protect at-risk ...

Triassic Fossil Reveals Nature's Best Jaw for Hunting Fast Fish

May 7, 2025 — Newly discovered species of extinct fish shows striking similarities to unrelated modern-day predators, suggesting certain traits have emerged multiple times and remained consistent over hundreds of ...

Two New Crocodile Species Discovered

May 6, 2025 — Biologists have discovered two previously unknown species of crocodiles, one living on the island of Cozumel and the other on the atoll of Banco Chinchorro, both off the Yucat n Peninsula. The ...

Invasive Rats and Rainforest Mammals Are Sharing Gut Microbes as Urban Areas Grow

May 1, 2025 — As urban development continues to creep further into Earth's oldest and most diverse rainforests, a study reveals native and invasive small mammals ...

Deciphering the Migratory Behavior and Connectivity of Mediterranean and Atlantic Cory's Shearwaters

Apr. 30, 2025 — A good wildlife management plan must include information on their migratory processes if the conservation of a species, particularly an endangered ...

From the Front Garden to the Continent: Why Biodiversity Does Not Increase Evenly from Small to Large

Apr. 30, 2025 — The number of species does not increase evenly when going from local ecosystems to continental scales -- a phenomenon ecologists have recognized for ...

Evolution of Pugs and Persians Converges on Cuteness

Apr. 28, 2025 — Through intensive breeding, humans have pushed breeds such as pug dogs and Persian cats to evolve with very similar skulls and 'smushed' faces, so they're more similar to each other than they are to ...

Tiny New Species of Snail Named After Picasso

Apr. 24, 2025 — An international team of malacologists discovered a new snail species, Anauchen picasso, in Southeast Asia that exhibits a highly complex and rectangularly angled shell shape, resembling a ...

The Oldest Ant Ever Discovered Found Fossilized in Brazil

Apr. 24, 2025 — A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member ...

New Species of Electricity-Conducting Organism, Name It After Tribe

Apr. 22, 2025 — Scientists have identified a novel species of bacteria that acts as electrical wiring, potentially ushering in a new era of bioelectronic devices for use in medicine, industry, food safety, and ...

How Do You Like Them Apples? Apple Genus Evolution Revealed

Apr. 22, 2025 — A new comparison and analysis of the genomes of species in the genus Malus, which includes the domesticated apple and its wild relatives, revealed the evolutionary relationships among the species and ...

Fishing for Cephalopod DNA Allows for Efficient Marine Surveying

Apr. 14, 2025 — New DNA probes allow for efficient surveying of the hidden lives of squids and octopuses in the deep sea. This development provides an effective tool for marine ecological research and conservation ...

European Bird Declines Linked to Range of Climatic Conditions Experienced

Apr. 9, 2025 — New research suggests conservation efforts could more effectively identify and protect bird species at greatest risk from climate change by better understanding the range of specific conditions they ...

Colourful City Birds

Apr. 9, 2025 — Bird species that do well in urban areas are more colorful and less ...

A Borrowed Bacterial Gene Allowed Some Marine Diatoms to Live on a Seaweed Diet

Apr. 1, 2025 — A group of diatom species belonging to the Nitzschia genus, gave up on photosynthesis and now get their carbon straight from their environment, thanks to a bacterial gene picked up by an ancestor, ...

New 'Shy' Fungus Found in Old-Growth Forest

Mar. 18, 2025 — Although fungi of the genus Piloderma are common, scientists have now discovered five previously unknown species. One of these is one of the most widely distributed species in Northern Europe, while ...

Conservation Efforts Analysis Reveals Which Actions Are Most Helpful for Endangered Species Status

Mar. 18, 2025 — Targeted conservation actions are essential to prevent wildlife extinctions, but more efforts are needed to fully recover biodiversity, according to a new ...

New Species of Killifish from Kenya Already Critically Endangered

Mar. 12, 2025 — A critically endangered new species of killifish sampled from an ancient forest in Kenya in 2017 and 2018 has now been described. Nothobranchius sylvaticus, from the Latin meaning 'pertaining to ...

Rare Frog Rediscovered After 130 Years

Mar. 11, 2025 — A team of researchers has rediscovered a frog species which has not been seen in more than 130 years. First described in 1902, Alsodes vittatus had evaded detection since then, despite multiple ...

Giant Clone of Seaweed in the Baltic Sea

Mar. 4, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that what was previously thought to be a unique seaweed species of bladderwrack for the Baltic Sea is in fact a giant clone of common bladderwrack, perhaps the ...

1,400 Species Found in Guts of Asian Hornets

Mar. 4, 2025 — A study of Asian hornets has found about 1,400 different species in their ...

Who Gets the Lion's Share? Ecologists Highlight Disparities in Global Biodiversity Conservation Funding

Mar. 3, 2025 — The extensive loss of biodiversity represents one of the major crises of our time, threatening not only entire ecosystems but also our current and future livelihoods. As scientists realize the ...

Snakes on Sado Island Coexist Through Differentiation of Activity Time, Habitat, and Diet

Feb. 28, 2025 — Sado Island, Japan, is inhabited by seven species of snakes, the largest number in any isolated island in Japan, except for the subtropical Ryukyu Archipelago. Researchers conducted a 5-year field ...

New Spatial Mechanism for the Coexistence of Tree Species

Feb. 26, 2025 — The reason why so many tree species can coexist in species-rich forests has long been a subject of debate in ecology. This question is key to understanding the mechanisms governing the dynamics and ...

New Manzanita Species Discovered, Already at Risk

Feb. 25, 2025 — A new species of manzanita -- a native California shrub famous for its twisted branches and wildfire resilience -- has been discovered on the central coast, but its survival is already threatened by ...

Some Animals Cooperate With Members of Other Species

Feb. 25, 2025 — Some animals are capable of cooperating with members of other species. An interdisciplinary team explores the cognitive underpinnings of such cross-species collaborations, opening up a new ...

Unexpected Discoveries in Study of Giraffe Gut Flora

Feb. 24, 2025 — The gut bacteria of giraffes are not primarily determined by what they eat, but by the species they belong to. This is shown in a new study in which researchers have analyzed the link between diet ...