Here are the 146 species discovered in 2022

If biodiversity decline is anything to go by, it’s also important to report the good news: 146 new species have been described in 2022 by the California Academy of Sciences! Animals, plants or fungi… each discovery enriches the tree of life.

Among the new species, the researchers identified 44 lizards, 30 ants, 14 sea mollusks, 14 flowering plants, 13 starsstars sea, 7 fish, 4 ladybugsladybugs4 Sharks 3 Night butterfliesNight butterflies3 worms, 2 scorpions, 2 spiders, 2 lichens, 1 toad, 1 clam, 1 MannaManna and 1 Sea urchinSea urchin flat”describes a communication. All on six continents and three different oceans, in environments ranging from isolated mountain tops to tens of meters below the surface of the seas!

28 new geckos have been added to the Pavia genus

Type Pavia So far this year contained 13 kinds of leperslepersAnd the endemicendemic affiliate New Caledonia. 28 new numbers have been added, tripling those numbers! Even if they both look alike, the researchers were able to show that all of these species are genetically different. So they went through a process called “non-adaptive radiation,” when species are genetically diverse but retain similar traits.

14 new marine molluscs in the Indo-Pacific

The newly described species reach 1.5 cm in length, and make up a quarter of all species known to science in the region Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some are only 2mm long, which is the width of a strand of spaghetti!

The first species of fish described by a researcher from the Maldives

Of the seven species of fish described this year, the most surprising is of course the pink treefish, which was discovered in the moldive Islands ! This is the first time that a species has been officially described by a Maldivian researcher, namely GateGate Plus a name in the local language: “finifenmaa” means “pink”!