New species lead to new discoveries in 2024

The Western Ghats and Northeast India has always been recognized as biodiversity rich and hotspots in India with multiple discoveries of endemic species from these regions, according to a Mongabay-India (MI) report.

In 2024 too, multiple species were newly described, most of them reptiles, amphibians or insects. Every new discovery is significant as it potentially redefines the course of science and takes us a step closer to the understanding of biodiversity and its conservation and management, says the MI report.

Some of these new species have been highlighted in the report. The king cobra was long believed to be a single species – Ophiophagus hannah. The longest venomous snake in the world is not considered to have much conservation significance and is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened taxa. That is about to change as a global study led by the Western Ghats-based scientist P Gowri Shankar has questioned the belief through a new discovery that the king cobra is not one species, but four distinct species separated by geographies. Among the four, two species are severely threatened, including the Western Ghats species, now named Ophiophagus kaalinga. The latest study findings that king cobra is not one, but four species have implications on both conservation and antivenom research.

When the species in question is as common as a lizard, the MI report points out how amphibian researcher Sandeep Das nearly missed identifying a new species because it closely resembled the widely known Agasthyagama bedomii, or northern kangaroo lizard. However, after consulting with other experts, he realised that the location of the sighting – a hilly district in Idukki, Kerala – was too far from the typical range of A. bedomii. Further studies confirmed this finding, leading to the discovery of a previously unrecognised species. Named Agasthyagama edge, the authors describe the species as “superficially similar to Agasthyagama bedomii in overall shape, size and colour but can be distinguished by combination of characters.

The northeastern parts of India, as diverse in animal and plant species as the Western Ghats, are relatively less studied, primarily due to the mostly hostile terrain and turbulence the region has witnessed historically. Despite these challenges, many researchers have managed to do some intense species studies in the region. For Mongabay India, the year 2024 began with the news of three new frog species — Gracixalus patkaiensis, Alcalus fontinalis, and Nidirana noadihing — discovered from the biodiversity hotspot of Kamlang-Namdapha landscape in Arunachal Pradesh. Tucked between Myanmar and India, Namdapha is considered the northernmost limit of the tropical rainforest in the world. Namdapha region, located on the border, faces many anthropogenic pressures that pose conservation challenges. Another reason why these discoveries are special is because those are not just three new species but three new genera – a taxonomic category comprising species exhibiting similar characteristics – recorded from India.

The MI report then adds that in 2017, field entomologist Vivek Sarkar and his assistant Tushar Sangma identified a new cicada species during an acoustic survey in Balpakram National Park, located in South Garo Hills, Meghalaya in 2017, leading to the identification of Becquartina bicolor, the bicolour butterfly cicada. In 2020, Rodeson Thangkhiew – then a PhD scholar and now an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Science and Technology in Meghalaya – was drawn to a unique cicada call coming from a tree next to a small stream. His observations would later align with Sarkar’s findings. The two teams published their research in March 2024 in Zootaxa. Sarkar emphasised that the locals in South Garo Hills and Ri Bhoi were already familiar with the bicolour butterfly cicada, underscoring the importance of integrating traditional ecological knowledge from local communities into scientific research.

Quite recently, another MI report while highlighting the importance of dung beetles in maintaining environmental health, also informed about the discovery of new dung beetle species, two of which are from northeast India. One of the important lessons from these new discoveries is the extent of biodiversity the country holds. These new findings have far-reaching impacts on conservation science: every new discovery is a step closer to our understanding of biodiversity and its conservation and management.