#species

www.bezosearthfund.org

Phoenix Species Project launches global effort to bring 100 of the…

The Bezos Earth Fund is a $10bn commitment to protect and restore the natural world through innovative projects across the planet.

www.sciencefocus.com

Dozens of extraordinary new species have just been discovered in an uncharted corner of Africa

Scientists have found dozens of new species during a survey of one of Africa’s last unexplored biodiversity regions. The survey, called the Cassai Life Atlas, recorded eight new dragonfly species, three new species of grasshopper and around 60 new moth and butterfly species in Angola’s remote Lisima Plateau. Specialists from The Wilderness Project led the trip, uncovering creatures and plant life previously unknown to science, including fruit beetles the size of a human palm and tiny spiders with fluorescent blue markings. “The result of the survey was higher diversity than we anticipated,” said Rob Taylor, expedition leader and a conservation ecologist. “Abundances were often low, partly because these ecosystems are nutrient-poor, but the diversity of specialised and unusual species was remarkable.” The Lisima Plateau has long been considered one of Africa’s last great biodiversity blank spots. The area also carries ecological significance beyond its borders – ecosystems and communities thousands of kilometres downstream depend on water from the plateau. “A clear understanding of the biodiversity here is essential for the effective protection of the entire system,” Taylor said. The survey provides the most detailed picture yet of a landscape almost entirely uncharted by scientists, revealing species like the crowned crab...

scitechdaily.com

Scientists Find Remarkable New Snail Species in Montenegro's Mountains

Scientists and citizen volunteers discovered two new snail species in northwestern Montenegro, revealing the region’s hidden biodiversity and strengthening calls to protect Komarnica Canyon within the Durmitor World Heritage Site rather than build a hydropower plant. Two previously unknown snails have been added to Europe’s documented wildlife. Named Cochlostoma komarnica and Cochlostoma dobrido, the species were formally described on July 27, 2026, in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal. Neither snail has an English name yet. Both live on limestone rocks and feed on algae and lichens, carrying cone-shaped shells that measure about 6 mm long. Their eyes sit along the sides of the head rather than at the tips of stalks, as they do in most land snails. Each animal also has a circular disk attached to its tail that seals the shell opening like a door. Citizen expeditions uncover hidden species The discoveries came from Taxon Expeditions, which organizes scientific fieldwork that members of the public can join. From 2018 to 2025, its expeditions in Montenegro were conducted with the nonprofit Taxon Foundation and local collaborators from the Montenegrin Ecologists Society. International researchers worked alongside citizen scientists, local students and conservationists to document wildlife in Durmitor National Park and...

www.thestar.com.my

DNA technology to identify species in Cambodian waterways, support dolphin conservation

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia has introduced advanced environmental DNA (eDNA) technology, an innovative scientific tool that can identify aquatic species through the analysis of water samples, in a move expected to strengthen conservation efforts for the endangered Mekong dolphin, as well as rare species and the general biodiversity of the Mekong River. The new technology was introduced during a two-day regional consultation workshop on Aquatic Biological Identification Using Environmental DNA (eDNA), held in Cambodia on August 4–5, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The workshop was chaired by Im Rachna, ministry undersecretary of state responsible for fisheries conservation, and brought together senior researchers from Cambodia, China, Laos and Myanmar. Rachna explained that expanding knowledge and application of eDNA technology would improve the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation, help protect rare fish species and contribute to safeguarding the endangered Mekong River dolphin, which inhabits the deep pools of the Mekong in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces. “The application of eDNA methods will provide countries along the Mekong River with accurate and rapid baseline data, enabling them to identify and designate fisheries conservation areas more effectively,” she said. Environmental DNA, or eDNA, consists of genetic material shed by aquatic organisms into...

bluedotliving.com

Feel-Good Friday: Mangroves, New Sea Species, Saving a Swamp, and a Resilient Atlantic Ocean

Outside Dot’s office window, the sky is tinted an eerie shade of orange. And I just brought in my laundry, because, though I typically love the scent of line-dried sheets, I don’t love it when the scent is that of wildfire. Air quality is dismal, and Dot’s spirits equally so. Which means it’s a good time to catalogue some climate wins: We’ll start with news that mangroves, which sequester carbon, buffer coastlines from storm surge and erosion, provide crucial habitat for fish nurseries, and filter pollutants from our waters, are on the rebound. A new study found that, since 2010, mangrove restoration has exceeded mangrove losses. Researchers relied on 40 years of satellite data to determine that mangroves are not only regenerating where they’ve existed in the past, but also expanding into new territory. Earlier losses have very nearly been erased. Daniel Friess, a professor at Tulane University and director of The Mangrove Lab said that this might just be “a rare conservation success story and an important source of optimism for climate action.” Meanwhile, off the coast of Brazil, a marine expedition has discovered 31 new marine species in just two weeks, The Guardian tells us. How did researchers...

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This Beaver Dam is So Huge, You Can See It from Space | Climate Heroes

YouTube video by Terra Mater

www.popularmechanics.com

Scientists Found DNA from Not One, but Two 'Ghost Species' Hiding in Our Genetic Code

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: UC Berkeley researchers created a framework designed to identify regions of our genome with super-archaic DNA. Experts believe we somehow inherited that DNA either directly or indirectly through interbreeding between species. Whether early Homo sapiens interbred with ghost species or inherited ghost DNA through Neanderthals and Densiovans who interbred with them, their identity still eludes us. Our ancestors were not an insular species. Early Homo sapiens interbred with hominins who lived alongside them until those species were either absorbed into our gene pool or went extinct for other reasons. It often explains the small percentage of unknown genes on DNA tests, which may be Neanderthal (predominantly for European populations) or Denisovan (predominantly for Asian populations). But going further back in time, before what are now known as modern humans began to trek out of Africa, there were even more hominin lineages that intermingled with Homo sapiens enough that they still haunt our genome as “ghost DNA” to this day. Researchers from UC Berkeley were determined to find ancient areas of the genome where there is neither Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA, but there is something else. Postdoctoral researcher Arjun Biddanda and graduate...

scienceblog.com

A moth species has killed off vast swaths of forest across Siberia, leaving so much dead, flammable wood behind that wildfires are now spreading faster than firefighters can

The trees that are burning across Krasnoyarsk this year were, in a lot of cases, already dead. Not from fire, and not from drought, but from a moth. Dendrolimus sibiricus, the Siberian silk moth, has spent the last several years stripping needles from fir, spruce, larch and pine across huge stretches of central Siberia, and a tree that loses its needles for enough consecutive seasons simply dies where it stands. It does not fall over. It does not decompose quickly in a climate this cold. It stays upright, drying out, for years, until something eventually sets it alight, and this year that something has been an unusually hot, dry stretch of Siberian summer. How a caterpillar kills a forest without ever touching fire The Siberian silk moth’s caterpillars are defoliators, meaning they eat needles rather than wood, bark or roots, and a single bad outbreak year can strip a stand bare across an area running into the hundreds of thousands of hectares. Research into the moth’s life cycle, published this year in Frontiers in Insect Science, examined why some populations follow a one-year larval cycle while others take two — and found the split isn’t simply a matter of temperature...