New Species!!!

Lost world: More than 1,000 species discovered in a decade in diverse Mekong

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:44 AM on 15th December 2008

• Comments (4)
• Add to My Stories

More than a thousand new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report from WWF.

Among the 1,068 new species discovered between 1997 and 2007 were the world’s largest huntsman spider, with a leg span of 30 centimetres, and the hot pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede'.

Most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands. However, the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market.

The 'dragon millipede' (left) can produce cyanide to protect itself. The aggressive Heteropoda dagmarae (right) was found in Laos

Enlarge

A Theloderma licin frog was found in Thailand

The Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

'This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,' said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo.

'It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,' he said.

The findings, highlighted in First Contact in the Greater Mekong report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad.

Enlarge

Scientists have found 22 species of snake including this green pitviper

The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

'It doesn’t get any better than this,' said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.

'We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.'

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong's astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct but was found in a local food market

'This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure… for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time,' said Raoul Bain, Biodiversity Specialist from the American Museum of Natural History.

The report recommends what is urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of the region is a formal, cross-border agreement by the governments of the Greater Mekong.

'Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered, but what is clear is that there is plenty more where this came from,' said Chapman.

New Discovered Species!!!

Lost world: More than 1,000 species discovered in a decade in diverse Mekong

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:44 AM on 15th December 2008

• Comments (4)
• Add to My Stories

More than a thousand new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report from WWF.

Among the 1,068 new species discovered between 1997 and 2007 were the world’s largest huntsman spider, with a leg span of 30 centimetres, and the hot pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede'.

Most species were discovered in the largely unexplored jungles and wetlands. However, the Laotian rock rat, thought to be extinct 11 million years ago, was first encountered by scientists in a local food market.

The 'dragon millipede' (left) can produce cyanide to protect itself. The aggressive Heteropoda dagmarae (right) was found in Laos

Enlarge

A Theloderma licin frog was found in Thailand

The Siamese Peninsula pitviper was found slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

'This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin,' said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo.

'It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful,' he said.

The findings, highlighted in First Contact in the Greater Mekong report, include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad.

Enlarge

Scientists have found 22 species of snake including this green pitviper

The region comprises the six countries through which the Mekong River flows including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.

It is estimated thousands of new invertebrate species were also discovered during this period, further highlighting the region’s immense biodiversity.

'It doesn’t get any better than this,' said Stuart Chapman, Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.

'We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.'

The report stresses economic development and environmental protection must go hand-in-hand to ensure the survival of the Greater Mekong's astonishing array of species and natural habitats.

The Laotian rock rat was thought to be extinct but was found in a local food market

'This poorly understood biodiversity is facing unprecedented pressure… for scientists, this means that almost every field survey yields new diversity, but documenting it is a race against time,' said Raoul Bain, Biodiversity Specialist from the American Museum of Natural History.

The report recommends what is urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of the region is a formal, cross-border agreement by the governments of the Greater Mekong.

'Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered, but what is clear is that there is plenty more where this came from,' said Chapman.

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When Worlds Converge

Worlds are converging in the evening twilight. Venus and Jupiter now appear close together, and this past weekend the Moon began to join them, as a thin crescent below the bright pair of planets. This was the scene Sunday evening, the night before the conjunction of these three worlds reaches it peak on Monday night, described in my November 28 blog. It was a little cloudy but there's the waxing crescent Moon below the Venus-Jupiter pair.

It was a good weekend around here for viewing bright “double stars” in the twilight. Not only were Venus and Jupiter putting on a show, but the Space Shuttle and Space Station were also making some excellent passes across the sky. On Saturday, the night before the Shuttle landed, I caught it coming over in the evening sky, followed two minutes later by the Space Station. The two had undocked the day before, so on Saturday they appeared as two stars chasing each other, with the Shuttle leading the ISS.

In the time-lapse movie, the Shuttle and ISS appear as streaks due to the long exposures of each frame that make up the movie. The twin bright objects in the lower left, in the southwest, are Venus and Jupiter. Be sure to look Monday night when you’ll see the Moon close to the two planets, forming a triangle of the night sky’s three brightest objects.

Did you see the great conjunction?

It was a marvelous sight on Monday, witnessed around the world — the close conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. I hope you had a chance to see it, wherever you were. For me, it turned out to be a great and memorable event.

I was at the local University of Calgary observatory, helping out with a public viewing session our Calgary astronomy community had organized. The evening started out clear and mild, and we had about 100 people show up, at dinner time on a Monday night, to take in the show. And the sky came through.

Not only did we have the Moon and planets performing, but as the sky was getting dark, and right on cue, we had a brilliant Iridium satellite flare appear just to the left of the planets. For a few seconds another bright “star” exploded into view in the sky, outshining even Venus and Jupiter. That prompted a spontaneous round of applause from the crowd.

Then, not two minutes later, the Space Station rose into the west and made a pass straight overhead, like a blazing star traveling across the sky. Well, people loved that! Great cheers went up from kids and adults alike, as we all waved to the astronauts. A crowd-pleaser for sure.

Then, as my time-lapse video shows, the clouds began to thicken, ending the sky show. No matter — we’d seen what we came for. In another hour snow was beginning to fall. We’d gone from autumn to winter in a few hours.

So what did you see? What was your experience? Send us your story by clicking the Comments link below. Or better yet, send us your photos at this link.

If you’d like to see some samples of what other people around the world saw and experienced, do head over to one of my favorite sites, Spaceweather.com. Curator Tony Phillips does a great job compiling galleries of celestial images from around the world.

But this time, Tony comments, “In the 10-year history of Spaceweather.com, no single event has generated more photos than this one. Submissions have poured in from six continents, dozens of countries, kingdoms, democracies, theocracies, ships, planes, cars, and even from a military aircraft refueling 35,000 feet over Iraq.”

That’s a telling statement. This truly was a great conjunction — and a worldwide event. It was a wonderful example of how astronomy and the sky know no borders. As the group Astronomers Without Borders points out, “Boundaries vanish when we look skyward. We all share the same sky.”

You’ll see abundant evidence for that in the Conjunction galleries you’ll see posted in the next few days at Spaceweather.com. All over the planet we all saw the same event. Yet, due to differences in our latitude and longitude, we all saw it a little differently — the position of the Moon, the angle of the planets, the landscape below.

But we all experienced the same wonder. One photographer in Pakistan said, “It was like a great face in the sky. People in Pakistan had never seen anything like this before.” From Iran, in broken English, came this comment, “The sky, another time, show his kindness to us.” Please be sure to look at the images from Iranian photographers — they are taking some of the most evocative images of the night sky I’ve ever seen.

So here was an event that mirrored what should be our global experience — yes, we all see things a little differently, but those differences are what make all our experiences interesting and worth sharing. And yet, at heart, our experiences evoke the same emotional response in us all. We all share those same feelings, just like we all share the same sky.

Organic Planet

There is a planet only 63 light-years away where I’d say devils fear to tread, much less any starship crew.

The planet in question is so close to its star it completes an orbit in just over two days. Peeking through the cloud tops, the reddish star would be an overwhelming large ball of flames 40 times the angular diameter of the full moon. Temperatures at noon would be a seething temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

The gas giant planet whirls around the obscure red dwarf star HD 189733, tucked away in the obscure southern constellation Vulpecula. The planet is simply called HD 189733 b, though you think by now it would deserve something more imaginative like Abydos, Bedrosia, Mongo, or Zetar.

So why are two of our most powerful space telescopes - Hubble and Spitzer - trained on this foreboding world? Well it has become, in amazingly short order, sort of an interplanetary drugstore to go sniffing around for chemicals relate to life, as we know it. Nothing imaginable lives on this planet, but the atmosphere is laced with the fundamental chemistry used by carbon-based life. So, maybe it should be called Organia.

Astronomers are cutting their teeth on practicing how to isolate and measure the chemical fingerprints in a planet’s atmosphere in preparation for the day organic compounds and other chemistry considered biotracers, can be seen on earthlike exoplanets. Some astronomers thought that such an observational feat was 50 years away, but it’s happening now.

Just yesterday a team of astronomers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported finding carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b. Seemingly inhospitable worlds like Mars and Venus have predominantly carbon dioxide atmospheres too. But on Earth, plants use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis to make sugars. So carbon dioxide’s presence, in balance with other biotracers, could be telltale evidence for life on another planet.

Earlier this year Hubble astronomers announced finding methane on HD 189733 b. When in the right mix with other biochemistry, this could someday reveal planets with creatures resembling flatulent cows. Add to that mix water vapor, which was found on the planet last year by the Spitzer Space Telescope, and later confirmed by Hubble.

So why is HD 189733 b such a special target? Its orbit is tilted edge-on to Earth so the planet can routinely be seen passing in front of its star (transiting) and passing behind the star (in eclipse). This endless game of peek-a-book allows for unique experiments with modest-sized telescopes, which are not now possible for non-transiting exoplanets.

When HD 189733 b passes in front of its star, Hubble can measure how light passing through the thin sliver of atmosphere on the plant’s limb is filtered by molecules in the atmosphere. Hubble can do this to exquisite precision because it is located in space.

When the planet passes behind its star both Hubble and Spitzer can make infrared measurements. Observations made just before eclipse contain the infrared glow of the planet and star. When the planet ducks behind the star only the infrared glow of the star remains. Subtract the star’s signature are you are left with information about the IR light coming from the planet.

These observations are a dress rehearsal for the day, perhaps not too far in the future, when we find an earthlike planet and want to look for telltale byproducts of life manifest in atmospheric compositon. In all likelihood the first such candidate will be orbiting a red dwarf star, and the planet itself with be a super-Earth, several items the mass of Earth. If we really get lucky the planet will lie in the star’s habitable zone where moderate temperatures allow for a liquid water ocean to exist.

It’s unlikely that the very first super-Earth will be a biochemical clone of our planet. But if the atmosphere has unusual chemical abundances there will be a spirited debate if these are the byproduct of living organisms.

I've gotten some e-mails critical of calling HD 189733 b incapable of life. I almost always use the qualifier "life as we know it" or perhaps better yet, "life as we could recognize it." It's fair to say that life is a condition of the universe. It is the favored form of self expression of matter, and therefore probably manifests itself in ways we can barely imagine. So in looking for extraterrestrial life, we have to begin with what we know.