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 March 12, a team of scientists gathered in the control room of the RV Falkor (too), an oceanographic research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. They watched the…
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…
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…
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”…
In September, scientists boarded submersibles and dived into the waters surrounding the Maldives, a nation of islands peppered across the Indian Ocean. Very little is known about the Maldivian sea…
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.…
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…
In deep waters off the coast of Japan, a hermit crab is wearing haute couture. On its shell is the new-to-science anemone species Stylobates calcifer, named after the fire demon…
A previously unknown genus of primitive giant kangaroo that once roamed the rainforests of New Guinea has been described by a team of paleontologists from Flinders University in Australia. The…
On an expedition in the Amazon River Delta, researchers found mangroves growing in water with little to no salinity and overlapping with freshwater forested wetlands — a phenomenon never before…
Researchers have described six species of ferns new to science from the tropical forests of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, all in the genus Danaea. “The described species are no tiny…
In the eastern waters off Hong Kong, a group of scientists searching for coral-eating nudibranchs stumbled upon a colorful surprise: three new species of sun corals. These orange, purple and…
The largest freshwater fish ever recorded was captured in the Mekong River last week by a fisher collaborating with researchers to document the river’s biodiversity in northern Cambodia. The 4-meter…
In 2019, researchers sailed to a sprawling seamount off the coast of South Africa, and lowered hydrophones to the seafloor. They picked up all kinds of noises: waves, the crackling of…
A frog that looks like chocolate, a resplendent rainbow fish, and 14 Sulawesi shrews were added to a growing list of “new to science” species over the past few months.…
Out in the azure waters and colorful corals of the Maldives, a resplendent, rainbow-hued fish has become the first to be named and described by a Maldivian researcher. New to…
On March 9, a search expedition made a notable discovery: the 144-foot (44-meter) wooden ship known as the Endurance, that once carried explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew to Antarctica,…
What’s in a name? The curious case of a nameless grasshopper will tell you that there is more to a name than meets the eye. To declare a species as…
It was completely by accident that Chris Schvarcz and his colleagues discovered two new marine phytoplankton species. In 2014, Schvarcz was using phytoplankton cultures to study viruses as a Ph.D.…
