New species News

A decade ago, scientist Gururaja K.V., who has discovered 23 species of frog from the Western Ghats, and his team unearthed a frog species in the ancient swamp forest of…

The mighty ape god Hanuman marshalled an army to build a bridge linking northern Sri Lanka’s Mannar region with Tamil Nadu’s Rameswaram, according to the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana. Centuries…

In 2001, researchers reported sighting the smooth-backed parachute gecko in southern Mizoram. It was the first time that this gecko, identified as Gekko lionotum, was reported to be present in…

Inside the narrow groundwater aquifers of the southern Indian state of Kerala reside a unique group of subterranean catfishes. These fishes live in total darkness with low concentrations of nutrients…

The 18th and 19th centuries' Sri Lanka saw many British naturalists studying the island’s rich biodiversity. They also contributed to profiling the same. One of them, W.W.A. Phillips, a tea…

Researchers have found a snake species new to science in the Himalayas — on Instagram! During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Virender Bhardwaj, a master’s student at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, explored…

Researchers recently described 12 new gecko species from the Western Ghats, 10 of which are endemic and found nowhere else in the world. Some of them got quirky names, after…

Seventeen new species have been added to the moth fauna of India from Tale Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, following moth biodiversity assessments that took place over 29 days in…

Since March 2020, scientists from the Institute of Natural History Education and Research (INHER), Pune have described seven new species of scorpions from the Western Ghats – six from the…

German herpetologist Frank Glaw has helped describe over 200 new species from Madagascar. But the most recent one is special: Brookesia nana is a chameleon that may be the smallest reptile…

During the monsoon season of 2011, H.M. Yeshwanth, a doctoral student studying insects, browsed the bushes of the thorny Acacia catechu plant in Hesaraghatta near Bengaluru, Karnataka and came across…

The first case of COVID-19 infection was officially reported in India in January 2020 from Thrissur in Kerala. In December 2020, a 90-year-old Britisher became the world’s first person to…

During the monsoon season, a team of scientists from India and China embarked on a fungal foray in Assam. Over the course of two weeks, they were amazed by the…

Botanists have described a new Aloe species from the desert of India’s northwestern state of Rajasthan. The species, Aloe trinervis, is based on a distinct observation: the leaf-like structures beneath…

With its long, scaly body and delicate, veil-like fins, the Gollum snakehead captured quite some attention when discovered last year in south India. Now, scientists have found that it is…

A new species of ant has emerged from the leaf litter at Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary in Goa. This underground-dwelling species turned up as part of a statewide survey of ants…

To anyone else, the dried herb pressed neatly into crisp white paper would have been just another herbarium specimen. But for scientists at the Indian Institute for Science Education and…

The sun beat down mercilessly. Being in the vicinity of south India's highest peak, in one of the coldest months – December – made no difference. After a tiring morning…

A newly discovered species of frog, endemic to the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats, is the first new addition to the genus Walkerana in more than a century. There are three previously…

It was a bright afternoon after two days of heavy rain in Kerala and Professor P. Manimohan’s two Ph.D. students K. P. Deepna Latha and K. N. Anil Raj were…