New Species

Shantanu Joshi is fascinated with creatures of all kinds, but especially damselflies, the small quick fliers of the order Odonata. In this episode he takes us deep into the forests of Northeast India, a place of immense beauty and interfering colonial history. Undersampling and poor specimen quality are a few reasons the diversity of this area is not well known, and Shantanu and his coauthors are determined to fill in the gaps. As with his project The Odonata of India, Shantanu shares in incredible detail the morphology, ecology, and even behaviors of these two new species, and discusses what their presence means for two unique and isolated habitats.

Shantanu’s paper “Description of Protosticta khasia sp. nov. and Yunnanosticta siangi sp. nov., with new records of P. samtsensis from Northeast India” is in volume 5448 of Zootaxa. 

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5448.3.2

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Shantanu Joshi - Transcript

Check out Shantanu’s amazing website, Odonata of India: https://www.indianodonata.org/

And follow him on Instagram: @odonataofindia

New Species: Protosticta khasia and Yunnanosticta siangi

Episode image credit: Shantanu Joshi

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

What if I told you that the oldest known biotic association of arthropods is a piece of Lebanese amber from the Cretaceous period? At the same time that flowering plants were diversifying, astigmatid mites were finding a very convenient way to get around: on the backs of termites. Can mites and termites be friends? How does one identify a tiny mite specimen without damaging its equally-important host? Learn the answers to these questions and more from Dr. Hemen Sendi on this episode of the New Species Podcast.

Hemen’s paper “The oldest continuous association between astigmatid mites and termites preserved in Cretaceous amber reveals the evolutionary significance of phoresy” is in volume 25 of BMC Ecology and Evolution. 

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02351-5

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Hemen Sendi - Transcript

This work was supported by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V04-00439.

New Species: Plesioglyphus lebanotermi

Episode image credit: Hemen Sendi

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Sunflowers come in all shapes and sizes, and the group has gained a new member. Nicknamed the “woolly devil,” Ovicula biradiata is the product of the amazing bi-national collaboration between taxonomists, conservationists, and community scientists in Big Bend National Park. But it comes at a time when the future of National Parks is uncertain.

“I think this particular discovery has inspired a lot of people outside of the world of biodiversity science to recognize that we still have a lot of work to do in terms of just describing the biodiversity in environments as iconic as the US National Parks” says Isaac Lichter Marck, one of the taxonomists involved in the description. “We assume that because it's found within a US national park that it'll be within an environment that's preserved into the future. That's been the ideal of national parks. But I think in the current reality we have to be cautious about that assumption.”

Listen in to learn more about Isaac and his work, the tremendous effort that went into this discovery, and what the future might look like for this little plant and others.

Isaac Lichter Marck’s paper “Ovicula biradiata, a new genus of Compositae from Big Bend National Park in Trans-Pecos Texas” is in issue 252 of Phytokeys

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.252.137624

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Isaac Lichter Marck - Transcript

New Species: Ovicula biradiata

Episode image credit: Cathy Hoyt

Other articles about this new species:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5308248/wooly-devil-new-species-genus-big-bend

https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/news/new-plant-species-discovered-in-big-bend.htm

Articles about cuts to National Parks staff and funding:

www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx7kez4vx2o

www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5304434/what-doge-cuts-could-mean-for-national-park-visitors

www.npca.org/articles/6614-five-ways-president-trump-s-executive-orders-could-harm-national-parks

Follow Isaac on social media:

Bluesky: @ca-naturalist.bsky.social

Instagram: California_naturalist

Twitter: @ca-naturalist

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Someone who identifies as a nature lover might not be excited to see trees cut down or large machines rolling across the forest floor. Science doesn’t always align with everyone’s expectations, and often scientists have to explain their work to audiences that aren’t interested or who don’t agree. Ethan Tapper has many of these conversations. Ethan works to manage Vermont forests sustainably and help them thrive, which often includes practices that might seem destructive or contrary to a forest’s best interests. Science is about communicating, and Ethan has worked hard to use communication as a tool to make caring for forests a community issue. 

What is the role of a scientist in explaining their work? How do we communicate unfamiliar scientific topics to people who already might have preconceived notions about them? These are some of the questions Ethan tackles in this episode. 

Ethan’s book can be found here, and wherever books are sold:

https://ethantapper.com/book

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Ethan Tapper - Transcript

Follow Ethan on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and TikTok: @howtoloveaforest

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast), and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like free bonus episodes or would like to support the podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Amanda and I discuss and review Bats! (1999) 

Our ratings:

Enjoyability: 🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇

Accuracy: 🦇🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇

This episode is the first in a new bonus series where I watch B-list horror movies with scientists and we rate them on accuracy and enjoyability.

All episodes are free, for future episodes you will just have to sign up through Patreon at Patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod. If you choose to support the podcast with a paid subscription, it is really appreciated! My 2025 goal is to cover the cost of hosting the website (about $80/year) which would be $7/month.

Amanda is a PhD candidate at Portland State University specializing in bat ecology and evolution. You can find her work here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Grunwald

On an expedition to Madagascar, Matjaž Gregorič and his research team came upon a damaged termite nest that had a few other invertebrate visitors. When they experimentally damaged the nest again, they found two unexpected things: spiders ballooning in to prey on the termites as they rebuilt, and hopeful ants standing by to steal termites from those spiders. It created what the authors called “a perilous Malagasy triad”, a three-way predator-prey-kleptoparasite interaction that tells a very interesting story about chemical signaling and arthropod behavior. As a bonus, they identified the spider involved as a brand new genus and species, named Vigdisia praesidens to honor Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s first female president. Listen in as researcher Matjaž Gregorič gives us the full story, as well as his thoughts on why it’s important to pursue science for science’s sake.

Matjaž Gregorič’s paper “A perilous Malagasy triad: a spider (Vigdisia praesidens, gen. and sp. nov.) and an ant compete for termite food” is in the July 14th issue of New Zealand Journal of Zoology. 

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1080/03014223.2024.2373185

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Matjaž Gregorič - Transcript

New Species: Vigdisia praesidens

More on Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the world’s first democratically-elected female president (Iceland, 1980-1996): https://www.councilwomenworldleaders.org/vigdiacutes-finnbogadoacutettir.html

An article about this paper: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/new-spider-species-named-after-icelandic-president/

Videos of the kleptoparasitic behavior: https://www.youtube.com/@ezlab7631/videos

Episode image credit: Matjaž Gregorič

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Rodrigo’s paper “Idiopyrgus Pilsbry, 1911 (Gastropoda, Tomichiidae): a relict genus radiating into subterranean environments” is in November 8th issue of Zoosystematics and Evolution

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.136428

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Rodrigo Salvador - Transcript

Follow Rodrigo on X/Bluesky: @Kraken_Scholar and @krakenscholar.bsky.social

Follow the Journal of Geek Studies on X/Bluesky:@JGeekStudies and @jgeekstudies.bsky.social

New Species: Idiopyrgus eowynae, Idiopyrgus meriadoci

Episode image credit: Rodrigo Salvador

Journal of Geek Studies: https://jgeekstudies.org/

Pensoft article, “The Snellowship of the Ring”: https://blog.pensoft.net/2024/11/11/the-shellowship-of-the-ring-two-new-snail-species-named-after-tolkien-characters/

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

What happens when a hymenopterist finds a mysterious arachnid in a Danish hothouse? Sean Birk Bek Craig was exploring the floor of a hothouse, also known as a greenhouse, when he came upon an interesting creature. “I could see that it was an arachnid when I looked up close,” he said, “but immediately just looking at it with my eyes… I was really perplexed about what the devil that was!” Short-tailed whip-scorpions, or members of the order Schizomida, are tiny arachnids who aren’t typically in Denmark, but with a lot of research, Sean concluded it had probably been accidentally imported on one of the tropical plants, possibly from Thailand. With a few ups and downs, Sean described it as his very first new species, and gave it a specific epithet of “serendipitus” after the unexpected way it came into his life.

Sean’s paper “First records of the order Schizomida from tropical hothouses in Denmark: Stenochrus portoricensis and a new species of Bamazomus (Schizomida: Hubbardiidae)” is in issue 67 of Arachnology Letters. 

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.30963/aramit6707

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Sean Birk Bek Craig - Transcript

New Species: Bamazomus serendipitus

Episode image credit: Sean Birk Bek Craig

Find Sean on X/Twitter: @BekBirk

Read the paper describing Materia boggildi: https://bioone.org/journals/arachnology/volume-19/issue-6/arac.2023.19.6.888/A-new-Masteria-Araneae--Dipluridae-from-tropical-hothouses-in/10.13156/arac.2023.19.6.888.short

Read the paper that nearly made Sean’s new species a synonym:

https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/121754/

Read the paper describing a new Schizomid genus from Germany:

https://arages.de/10.5431/aramit4906

Read Abrams’ paper “Too Hot to Handle”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790319301824

Enjoy the World Schizomida Catalog: https://wac.nmbe.ch/order/schizomida/5

Read Matty’s thesis on biologists: https://research.ku.dk/search/result/?pure=en/publications/for-the-love-of-the-living(049e101d-c89d-472f-ba7a-f7a62e8337a4).html

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

In this episode, Danniella Sherwood brings us two new pseudoscorpions from Ascension Island, one of the most remote islands in the world. Ascension’s ecological history is full of many twists and turns, and it is home to amazing biodiversity that is in desperate need of conservation. Danni and her team worked together to address this need, producing a paper titled ‘David and Goliath’ with one very small and one very large new species. They also provide new faunistic records, or records that show that Ascension and the nearby Boatswain Bird Island are home to stunning endemic pseudoscorpion diversity.

One of my favorite things about Danni’s story is the emphasis she places on teamwork. “It takes a village to produce good research,” She says. “it takes a village to work towards visions of conserving invertebrates in their habitats. You need to have people from all fields, all specialties, all viewpoints in order to make something that’s really impactful, really lasting and enduring to the fields of conservation and ecology and taxonomy.” Listen to this episode for a meaningful story of teamwork and community, and to learn the importance of taxonomy’s role in conserving island flora and fauna. 

Danniella Sherwood’s paper “David and Goliath: on the pseudoscorpions of Ascension Island, including the world’s largest, Garypus titanius Beier, 1961, and a new, minute, Neocheiridium Beier, 1932 (Arachnida: Pseudoscorpiones)” is in issue 42 of Natura Somogyienis.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.24394/NatSom.2024.42.131

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Danni Sherwood 2 - Transcript

Listen to Danni’s other New Species episode about St. Helenian wolf spiders: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0o8dL8yEpRiFtMO1gVNjkc?si=c068e5d3b6fb40f7

New Species: Garypus ellickae and Neocheiridium ashmoleorum 

Episode image credit: Adam Sharp

Follow the Ascension Island Government Conservation Directorate here:

https://www.facebook.com/AscensionIslandConservation

https://twitter.com/aigconservation

Follow Danni’s research on all manner of arachnids here:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Danniella-Sherwood

Follow the Species Recovery Trust:

https://www.facebook.com/TheSpeciesRecoveryTrust/

https://www.twitter.com/speciesrecovery

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

This paper started because Chloé Löis Fourreau and Marcos Teixeira were both too sick to dive during a NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) bioblitz expedition in the Red Sea. Hoping to at least collect something, they swam to the shoreline and began snorkeling in the shallow water. When they began turning over rocks, what felt like a wasted day turned into an amazing intertidal discovery. In this episode, Chloé and Marcos are joined by their colleague Juan Sempere-Valverde to tell the exciting story of their new segmented polychaete worm, and to encourage everyone to pay attention to annelids and the great value they bring to science. 

Just a quick disclaimer for this episode, for some reason my primary recording didn’t save so i’m using the backup. As a result the quality is not great, and for that I really apologize! A reminder that every episode has a transcript (below) so please use that to aid in any hard-to-hear parts.

Chloé Löis Fourreau, Marcos A.L. Teixeira, and Juan Sempere-Valverde’s paper “Two new records and description of a new Perinereis (Annelida, Nereididae) species for the Saudi Arabian Red Sea region” is in volume 1196 of Zookeys.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1196.115260

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Chloé Löis Fourreau, Marcos Teixeira, and Juan Sempere-Valverde - Transcript

New Species: Perinereis kaustiana

Episode image credit: Juan Sempere-Valverde

New Species: Perinereis kaustiana

Episode image credit: Juan Sempere-Valverde

Follow Chloé on Twitter: ChaoticChloeia

Follow Juan on Instagram: @bem_lab and @zoologiaus

Read Marcos’ recent paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2022.2116124

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected]

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod