How are new species found? especially with insects there are so many how does one look at one and say hey that must be new! What is the process that is around finding a new species? There are so many different animals out there how can someone see one and think its new? Furthor more how do they check? Is there some huge catalog somewhere with all the known species that they have to flip through the pages and compare? And Say they do find what they think is a new one, how do they know its just not an already discovered one with some sort of genetic mutation or deformity.
Well most new discoveries these days (I would imagine) are done by experts on that particular Genus or Family. If I scientist with an in-depth knowledge of wasps finds a interesting speciment, he would then most likely know if it fits in a already discovered species, or at least have the appropriate literature close at hand.
And yes, they to have a big catalog of everything, its the whole concept behind Binomial nomenclature . Using the index path of Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species they can narrow down the search quite effectively.
Much old taxonomy (the use of physical makers to differentiate species and assign families and interrelatedness amongst species) is now being rewritten on the basis of DNA testing as it is more reliable.
A single deformed species would not be enough to assign a whole species, and DNA testing would also help here.
Nature of course does not work in neat species. I was reading the local paper about problems working out whether some species of freshwaterfish was actually different than another. Apparently DNA testing and taxonomy gave unclear answers. I think it was important in that case as the fish in question was quite rare so it would be afforded protected species if it was different than its more common cousin.
In that case the fish probably could interbreed if ever they were to meet, but they have been separated by geography and now look a bit different. Does that make them a new species?
This is one of the problems. There is no overall catalog with all known species, nor any kind of central depositary for information.
In the case of insects or other groups of invertebrates and for plants, figuring out what is a new species can be quite a chore. In some cases the taxonomy has not been revised for some time (often many decades). New species may have been described in obscure journals in different countries. Some of these may actually be duplicates of existing species. The type specimens may be held in scattered collections on different continents.
For the more obscure or larger groups, the only way to determine if a species is really new is to send it to a specialist in that group. He or she will be familiar with the literature on that group, and probably have reviewed many of the type specimens. However, classical taxonomy has been greatly neglected in recent years. Funding goes to molecular biology, not to this kind of research. As senior experienced taxonomists retire, they are not being replaced.
It is easy to “discover” new species in the tropics. Here in Panama I could probably go out almost anywhere and find undescribed species of the lesser-studied groups of arthropods. However, it would probably take years to put a name to them: they would need to be sent to a specialist who could review them, and because such people are now few and far between they are usually backlogged.
Normally you will find several individuals all the same. It’s generally frowned on these days to describe new species on the basis of a single specimen that may be aberrant. It happens, but usually on the basis of some difference that is not likely to represent a minor variant, such as a small difference in color. Also, with genetic work one could establish that it was too different to be the same species.
As I mentioned above, there is no actual catalog of all species. Simply giving something a binomial name doesn’t guarantee that it hasn’t been named before.
There is an effort currently underway called Catalog of Life that aims to compile a comprehensive list of all presently described and recognized species. However, they have only recently reached a total of 1 million out of an estimated 1.75 million described species. There may be 5 to 10 million species in all, most of them yet to be described.
I have heard (an UL?) that a new species of bird was discovered, and a few were shot in order to study them close-up. It was later realized that the ones that were studied were the last existing members of the species. Urban legend?
As a slight aside (though still relevant), this is a significant problem with recording fossil species. Often, you don’t have the luxury of obtaining multiple specimens (as mentioned by Colibri, above), so you have to make do with only one or a few specimens, or, more often than not, only a partial specimen at that. The result is a lot of clutter in fossil species.
For example, during the Marsh-Cope “dinosaur wars”, practically every new bone pulled out of the ground was assigned to a new species. More recent research has re-examined many of these species, and many have been re-assigned to existing species, or been classed as nomen dubium (which usually means the specimen is too fragmentary to really make any positive case one way or another regarding the species to which it should belong).
All of this is complicated by the potential for sexual dimorphism, age of the specimen (a young individual may have different morphology from an adult individual) and simple variation within a population (thus necessitating the larger sample size that one would ideally have before making a species determination).
I have never heard of a specific case like that. Some new species have been collected and not seen since their discovery, but it hasn’t been certainly that the ones collected were the last ones, nor in most cases that the species is actually extinct.
Your story could be based in part on the case of the Guadalupe Caracara, in which a scientific collector killed some of the last individuals ever seen. However 1) the species was already known to science; 2) he didn’t kill all the birds he saw (although he did kill most of them); 3) some birds evidently still survived after his collections; 4) the species was mostly driven extinct by persecution by sheepherders, and almost certainly would have been killed off anyway even if the collector had not shot any of them.
I have no idea how widely accepted they are among true on the ground scientists outside the US (like Colibri), but there are organizations that attempt to provide a systematic approach to the naming of new species or revisions to the “accepted” taxonomy.
For practicality, when determining the “correct” name for a taxon, I often default to the validity information in the ITIS, however, all my work is in N. America, where the database is obviously very well established. Again, practically, most disputes resulting from molecular data are either resolved among the principal workers or else I consider them too esoteric to make much of a difference to me.
Sure, the Zoological and Botanical Codes formalize procedures for how species can be given names, and are pretty much universally recognized by any practicing taxonomist. However, the organizations do not decide whether the species itself is actually a valid species, only that the name that is proposed has not been given to some other species previously and is available for use. They do not determine if the organism named has previously received some other name from someone else.
True, but at least if you ascribe to the theory that there are, in fact, discrete species that can be named these efforts are worthwhile for the concept of preserving priority-giving credit where credit is due, and advancing the science where revision is concerned by at least providing a first layer of defense against boutique publishing and revisionist taxonomy. One cannot just make random changes by renaming existing recognized taxa.
I understand that in the tropics you can find new species on a walk around the block, but if you are going to rename the local bumblebee you are going to at least jump through some hoops.
Frankly I had never heard of the catalogue of life database project. Pretty neat; it appears to use ITIS as a primary data source.
In fact, the rule of priority is so strong that you can’t even correct clear errors by the original author. For example, there are a couple of bird species in South America which have the specific name canadensis (“of Canada”) due to confusion with granadensis (“of [New] Granada,” that is, Colombia).
So, how many new species have named, Colibri? Don’t be modest. Include the ones you collaborated with others on, if that is relevant.
Since I work on birds, there’s not too much opportunity. Unlike insects, they are pretty well known. However, at the moment I am collaborating on the description of a new species in Africa. My team collected specimens during field surveys a few years ago.
It belongs to a species group that until a few years ago were all considered subspecies of a single species. Genetic work led to another group of scientists splitting them into four different species.
Our new species is distinct in plumage from all the other forms, and also is genetically distinct. The species was known to occur in our area, but since only one juvenile had been collected there previously it had not been realized how distinct it was.
I am not at liberty to say much more about it until the description is published.
I have probably collected a few new species of insects, but as far as I know none of the entomologists I gave them to have described them yet.
Not exactly the same as your story, but northern elephant seals were hunted so close to extinction through the 19th century that when 9 were discovered on Guadalupe Island in Mexico in 1892, the expedition killed and collected the bodies of 7 to bring to the Smithsonian Museum. Townsend and Anthony, who ran the expedition, explained that the species was “doomed” to extinction anyway, and that the specimens would be needed to preserve them for science (very few specimens were in museums at the time.) Northern elephant seals have since made a dramatic comeback to the hundreds of thousands of individuals, no thanks to scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Reference: Elephant Seals
There are probably similar stories from the world of avifauna, especially given the prediliction of biologists of a century ago to kill indiscriminately for specimens, but this is pretty close to what you describe.
I’ve have always wanted to know why scientists call animals different species based on ridiculous minute variations. I thought the very definition of a species has a lot to do with two creatures producing non sterile offspring. I fail to understand how slight differences, in say feather color, prove two different ‘species’ ARE two different species. Blacks and Asians are both homo sapiens.
The world is full of species that can produce fertile hybrids. The question is whether or not they actually do so in the wild. It may be that what you call a minute variation is just enough to prevent members of one population from seeing members of another population as viable mates, even though they could reproduce if they tried. Maybe at some point in the future those populations will merge together again, or more likely, they will drift apart until they no longer can interbreed.
Do you, for example, consider wolves and coyotes to be separate species? They are quite different in appearance and behavior, but they can produce fertile offspring, although they don’t do so in the wild very often.
To a certain extent, the concept of a species is a human construct. The “bush of life” is one big continuum if you consider the ancestors of the populations today. What we see today is just the very tips of that bush, and many of the tips are closer than we might think. But if we are going to define separate populations, we have to draw the line somewhere, and where we have chosen to draw that line is: Do not regularly interbreed in the wild to produce fertile offspring.
Yes, to a very large extent. But interestingly enough, it appears that some species routinely outcross to a limited extent. This is noted in dabbling ducks and perhaps other species. Colibri, or someone, please help me out. Apparently there is sufficient evolutionary advantage in incorporating (or capturing) diversity that otherwise clearly distinct species engage in the practice.
Indeed, the “bush of life” is a continuum, and it operates (in this analogy) in 4 dimensions. We are only comfortably able to work with those branch “tips” that happen to extend into this single instant of time, the present. Since a “species” (a distinctive population segregated by its breeding practices) is fluid in time, the concept of species cannot be defined simply based upon morphological or other characteristics of individuals.
A proper definition of species must extend to the entire population, and must encompass dynamics like the above. This is why it can be so difficult to (1) identify a species and (2) explain to a layman how that identification is made.
I don’t get what your question is. Do some populations that are considered distinct species cross breed at times? Yes. And to some extent it’s going to be a judgment call as to how much interbreeding is too much. Some species are merged if it is discovered that too much cross breeding has occurred. But the point you tried to make in your first post is simply incorrect-- that two populations of birds can be called distinct species only because of slight variations in plumage. That simply isn’t the case. It must be shown that they can’t (or don’t) regularly produce fertile offspring in the wild. And with DNA techniques being what they are today, we have that tool available to us as a more significant indicator than morphology.
If you read Colibri’s first post on this thread, you’ll see that this is not a common practice.
Right. It is difficult to do. I don’t think anyone is saying it is easy.
John Mace, please pardon me if I have injected some confusion. I don’t think I asked a question, and I had no previous “first post” in this thread. Perhaps that was someone else?
I was agreeing with you, and attempting to amplify your statements about the complexity of defining a species. I was noting the fact that surprisingly large numbers of individuals of some species of puddle ducks DO routinely cross in the wild, producing fertile offspring. This despite the fact that there are both behavioral and clear morphological differences between them. And it is believed that this hybridization is deliberate (or at least is routinely engaged in, and is repeated), not accidental, and that it confers some specific evolutionary advantage to one or both species. All without changing the conclusion that these are and will apparently remain separate species.
I was hoping Colibri or anyone else might refresh my memory regarding this process, since I’ve burned a few brain cells since studying it, and I cannot just now find an appropriate cite.
I intended only to re-emphasize the complexity of the actual, working biologist’s use of the term “species”, and how different that can be from a layman’s “Well, they sure look similar”.