and even more...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5342081.ece

And if you were looking for thousands of new species, it really isn't that hard to find them...

http://www.panda.org/index.cfm?uNewsID=152622

Discovery of the world's smallest snake

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/04/snake-smallest-barbados.html

or probably better put, the world's smallest snake yet discovered. 

Nabakov weighs in...

"My work enraptures but utterly exhausts me...  To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing
that I cannot describe it."


Vladimir Nabokov, 1945 [from letter to his sister, written while studying butterflies at MCZ, Harvard University]

Rediscovery of a rare mussel

More to follow, but here is the mussel in question: http://www.pinicola.ca/nasuta.htm

New Species of Isidella Bamboo Coral

A NEW SPECIES OF ISIDELLA BAMBOO CORAL--(as told by Peter Etnoyer) "A new species of deep-sea bamboo coral, a calcareous sea fan called Isidella, was reported...by Discovery News and MSNBC. The species will debut with a full and proper binomial in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington at the end of December 2008. If you can’t wait, a 52 in skeleton from 3400 ft in the deep Gulf of Alaska is now on display in Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Sant Ocean Hall. This is, as they say, “my new species”. Folks do you that favor when you’ve been studying something for such a ridiculously long time. But its not really mine, of course. I’ll see the skeleton on display for the first time this January, six long years since I first saw the animal alive, in its natural habitat, through the porthole of the Alvin submersible.

Here’s the mug shot of the paratype from the forthcoming manuscript. It’s 132 cm tall, the largest bamboo coral ever collected in its entirety, retrieved by Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott from 1032 m depth on Welker Seamount, dive 4035 in the Northeast Pacific (1). Three strategic karate chops were required to fit it in a box (read on...)."

Fortuitous Wanderings

FORTUITOUS WANDERINGS--Johnny Wilson has made a number of memorable discoveries simply by spending time in the field. He writes... "Over 2005/2006 I spent a year on subantarctic Gough Island. This island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the South Atlantic Ocean. Maintained mainly as a weather station with exceptionally strict biological policies, not many biologists have had the opportunity to spend quality time on Gough. Many rare and endemic plants, birds and invertebrates occur on the island. In fact the island has also been called “the most important seabird island in the world”. With global seabird populations plummeting, the United Kingdom (to which the island belongs) decided in the late 1990’s to establish a monitoring program for a number of endangered bird species breeding on Gough. Early this millennium two teams of biologists visited the island with this task at hand, also ending up discovering that mouse predation lead to catastrophic brood failures in many of the island’s bird species (and likely other biodiversity as well). This gave me and a fellow biologist Marie-Helene Burle the opportunity to visit Gough, tasked with determining the feasibility of eradicating the introduced mice. Fresh in the wake of the departure of the SA Aghulas, the ship that brought the new over-wintering team to Gough, Johnny and Marie-Helene set off for some exploration. Arriving at the cliffs overlooking the famous Seal Beach they a Southern Elephant Seal as it swam away from the beach into the ocean. With the departure of the Elephant Seal we appreciated the scenery for a while longer before descending a cliff to explore Seal Beach from closer. Upon reaching the beach a number of Subantarctic Fur Seals were scurrying around before one large, gray-colored seal attracted our attention. This visitor turned out to be an Antarctic Fur Seal, previously unrecorded on Gough. Surprisingly further investigation revealed not one but seven Antarctic Fur Seals. As passionate birder my rule of thumb for seeing vagrant birds, especially first records, is that a single individual is possible, but the more individuals there are the more likely the chances that you are making identification mistakes. In addition Antarctic Fur Seals and Subantarctic Fur Seals pose some serious identification challenges. So I gathered some photographic evidence before leaving for Gough’s research station, eager to phone a friend. Marthan Bester is not only world-renowned researcher on Antarctic seals but had spent two years on Gough during his doctoral research, with numerous subsequent visits. Nobody knows Gough like Marthan does. During our phone conversation I first mentioned to Marthan that I thought I saw an Antarctic Fur Seal on Gough. Marthan was excited but wanted to see the photos. Marthan considered the records dubious until photographs were emailed, after which everyone celebrated with a publication of Polar Biology. In total, 18 Antarctic Fur Seals were discovered on Gough that month."

Ecological Release

ECOLOGICAL RELEASE--In Naturalist, E. O. Wilson writes... "Literary history was forgotten when I turned my attention to the wilderness that surrounded us. Soon after arriving and before falling ill, I wakled into lush rain forest that reached all the way to the sandy beach, a rarity in the overpopulated tropics. It was home to undisturbeed flocks of parrots and crowing jungle fowl, the wild ancestral species of the domestic chicken. Flying foxes, giant fruit-eating bats, flapped leisurely above the treetops. I soon fixed the affinities of the ant species I found tehre: Melanesian, as expected, Solomon Islands most likely, hence ultimately Asian. I made a general observation on the ecology of these insects that would find a place in my later synthesis of island evolution. It is as follows. Relatively few species of ants inhabit Espiritu Santo: the island is just too distant and geologically young to have received many immigrants. Freed from heavy competition, some of the colonists have dramatically increased their niche; they occur in dense populations across a wide range of local environments and nest sites. I would later call this phenomenon "ecological release," and help to establish it as an important early step in the proliferation of biodiversity." 

Insect Thermoregulation

THERMOREGULATION IN INSECTS--In The Snoring Bird, Heinrich writes of several of his discoveries. Among them is his discovery of thermoregulation in insects. Heinrich writes, "Superficially, sphinx moths resemble hummingbirds. They are close analogues, similar in size, swift and agile in flight, and colorful. The lined sphinx (Hyles lineata) has a soft "fur" of green and tan scales and its pink underwings are framed in black while the abdomen has patches of white. I wanted to catch one of these moths, and when one stopped nearby to hover and sip nectar from a Belloperone flower (where the hummingbirds had fed minutes earlier) I had my chance. With a swoop of my net I had one fluttering inside against the gauze. I grabbed the moth between my thumb and forefinger, struck the point of a tiny thermometer probe called a thermocouple into the flight muscles of its thorax, and quickly read the instrument's dial. The needle jumped to indicate a whoppingly hot body temperature of 42.5 degrees Celcius (108 degrees Fahrenheit)--and it stayed there for several seconds until the moth, now stationary, gradually started to cool. The temperature on the dial--ten degrees Fahrenheit higher than human body temperature--startled me. Maintenance of a high body temperature was considered an advanced trait of the "higher" vertebrate animals, mammals, and birds. Others, like fish, amphibians and reptiles, were thought to be "cold-blooded" because they are unable to generate sufficient internal heat to sustain a high body temperature." Heinrich would go on to understand the mechanism by which some insects can elevate their temperature (read on in his book), but his initial discovery was simply that insects could elevate their body temperatures above ambient conditions at all.

HIB Vaccine

The HIB VACCCINE --Jennifer Steinberg writes... "The year is 1985. Ronald Reagan is president. The artist formerly known as Prince is still known as Prince. Today’s high school students are three-and-a-half feet tall and watch He-Man on Saturday mornings. And a particularly nasty germ called Haemophilus influenzae, type B, kills or permanently injures more than 6,000 children in the United States every year. Times change—sometimes for the better (continued here)."

Xenotransplantation

XENOTRANSPLANTATION--Karen Hopkin writes... "They’re the stuff of mythology: satyrs, free-spirited critters with the head of a man and the body of a goat, that prance through the woods, cracking wise and looking for trouble. Or the Minotaur, a nasty beast with a man’s body and a bull’s head. Or mermaids, sweet ladies with fish tails and a fondness for song. Now we know better (continued here)."