discovered by researchers at the California Academy of Sciences<\/a> last year. They include creatures from far-flung lands as well as finds closer to home. Each new organism furthers our knowledge while hinting at just how much we have left to understand about the living things that share our planet \u2013 and highlighting the importance of conservation in a changing world.<\/p>\n\u201cDescribing (a species) is the very first step to being able to conserve it. If you don\u2019t know it\u2019s there, if you don\u2019t know what it is, it\u2019s hard to worry about it,\u201d said Steven Beissinger, a professor emeritus of ecology and conservation biology at UC Berkeley who was not involved in the studies. \u201cThese kinds of studies are important \u2014 they\u2019re not the end of the story, they\u2019re the start of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-0115-4.jpg\")
The tiny sea slug Doto kwakwak \u2013 named after the word for \u201cyellow\u201d in the language of the local Kumeyaay tribe \u2013 swims around the tide pools of San Diego. Local tide-poolers found it and reported it to scientists, who confirmed that it was a new species last year. (Photo courtesy of California Academy of Sciences)\u00a0<\/p>\n
That night dive in the Philippines was particularly fruitful for Gosliner; he and his colleagues found two other species unknown to science on the same dive, he said. \u201cAfter studying reefs in the Philippines for 30 years, we still find new things on almost every dive,\u201d said Gosliner. \u201cThe overwhelming number of species we just don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Estimates range broadly, but one widely cited study suggests some 8.7 million species of animals, plants and their kin. If that\u2019s close to reality, it would mean we know less than a fifth of species on earth.<\/p>\n
While some species may be tucked away in unexplored reefs, others may be hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-01XX-1.jpg\")
The Galapagos’ Lava Heron has been known to science since the 1800s, but only last year did DNA testing confirm that the bird is its own unique species. (Photo by Darren Clark\/ California Academy of Sciences)\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Galapagos Lava Heron has been known to western science for nearly two centuries, first described by scientists just a few years after Charles Darwin took his famous voyage to the islands.For decades, scientists have wondered whether the animal was its own species or related to birds on nearby South America, so Jack Dumbacher, Ornithology Curator with the California Academy of Sciences, and a team of collaborators sought to settle the mystery using DNA samples from the herons.<\/p>\n
While finding a new species in plain sight might seem simple, catching the birds \u2013 a relatively common sight in the Galapagos \u2013 proved a herculean task. The scientists tried setting up walls of nets, using snares, tossing nets over the birds but \u201cthe heron was always way, way too smart and saw it coming,\u201d said Dumbacher.<\/p>\n
At one point, they assembled nearly invisible fine mesh nets in the cover of darkness only to have to run around on slick, sharp lava rocks to corral and catch a heron. At another point, a ranger waded through the mud of a mangrove forest and clambered into a mangrove to catch a bird for a blood sample, before doing the same trek in reverse to put it back.<\/p>\n
Once the researchers had the samples, however, they were able to compare the lava herons\u2019 DNA to that of other related birds to provethey were a distinct species.<\/p>\n
Beissinger, who specializes in conservation biology with a focus on birds, says that finding a new bird species like this is rare. While in a given year thousands of new species of beetle might be discovered, only a handful of new bird species are typically described.<\/p>\n
![\"Thick](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-01XX-5.jpg\")
Thick white hairs cover the woolly devil, which has been hiding in plain sight in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, unknown to science until recently. (Photo by James Bailey\/ Big Vend National Park)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other species were discovered a bit closer to home. The woolly devil was spotted by a volunteer for Big Bend National Park in Texas, when on a spring hike, Deb Manly stumbled across a small hairy-looking flower with two maroon florets sticking out like devil\u2019s horns. Manly uploaded photos of it to the app iNaturalist, a community-built catalog of species observations, and the strange sighting sparked interest in a group of botanists, including Isaac Lichter Marck, Botany Curator at the California Academy of Sciences. \u201cIt snowballed into a plant mystery\u2026The question was \u2018where does this weirdo plant fit into the tree of life?\u2019\u201d said Lichter Marck.<\/p>\n
While exploring that question, he and a team of scientists found that the plant wasn\u2019t only a new species, but a new genus \u2013 meaning it wasn\u2019t very closely related to any other species known to science. \u201cThere might be a misconception that new species are only found in remote, pristine places in countries that are far away,\u201d said Lichter Marck. \u201cBut the woolly devil is an example of something that\u2019s here in our backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also an example of how everyday people can help science document the scope of life on earth. In multiple cases \u2013 including a colorful Californian sea slug described by Gosliner \u2013 new species discovered last year were first sent to scientists by curious hikers or tide poolers.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-01XX-3.jpg\")
The Dark Vader Goby – so named because its deep purplish hue makes it “the darkest of all gobies,” according to the study authors – measures a mere half-inch long and was found in the fjords of Papua New Guinea. (Photo by Mark Erdmann\/ California Academy of Sciences)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lichter Marck says that the help\u00a0from the greater public is sorely needed. While estimates vary, some studies suggest the planet is losing species at least 100 times faster than the \u201cnatural\u201d rate we might expect. Each species that disappears affects its ecosystem<\/a> \u2013 its loss echoing in the creatures that it ate or that preyed upon it and in all the ways it interacted with its habitat.<\/p>\nThat loss may soon include the woolly devil \u2013 which hasn\u2019t been spotted since 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were lucky to find it potentially before it goes extinct. There are lots of other plants that we know are on their way out,\u201d said Lichter Marck. \u201cI think about it as an all-hands-on-deck scenario \u2026 We know we\u2019re up against the clock, and more eyes on the ground helps in the project of documenting what is out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of the scientists interviewed by the Bay Area News Group echoed that urgency. \u201cWe\u2019re losing books from the library of life before they\u2019ve been fully cataloged and their significance is understood,\u201d said Beissinger.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-01XX-6.jpg\")
A shieldback katydid, Aglaothorax khioneos, is an insect found in the White Mountains east of Bishop California with a high-pitched chirping song was distinguished as a species in a paper last year (Photo by David Weissman\/California Academy of Sciences).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the concern, there are some signs of hope. After some of Gosliner\u2019s discoveries of marine species in the Philippines, he has collaborated with local communities and governments to create protected reefs that could serve as a rich bastion of biodiversity for future generations. That model shows how these new species can lead to better outcomes for the environment. \u201cThere\u2019s a conservation result to finding this new diversity, and that\u2019s really rewarding,\u201d said Gosliner. \u201cDiscovery is really the first step.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a late night in the Philippines, zoologist Terry Gosliner slipped into the waters of a sandy harbor,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":526468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[3425,18844,19528,4788,12322,63965,1864,26922,159,233759,67,132,68,837],"class_list":["post-526467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-biodiversity","tag-birds","tag-conservation","tag-flowers","tag-galapagos","tag-new-species","tag-plants","tag-science","tag-sea-slugs","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115919381168385545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SJM-L-NEWSPECIES-01XX-2.jpg\")
The sea slug Cyerce Basi comes out at night to feast on toxic algae off the coast of the Philippines. “It immediately caught my eye,” said scientist Terry Gosliner, who described the species in a paper last year. (Photo by Vanessa L. Knutson\/ California Academy of Sciences)\u00a0<\/p>\n