AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Every year, scientists add thousands of new species to the scientific record, and here to talk through some of the coolest discoveries is NPR's science correspondent, Jonathan Lambert. Hey, Jon.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so what have scientists discovered this year?
LAMBERT: So I want to start with a really wild-looking beetle...
CHANG: Ooh.
LAMBERT: ...That was discovered by an entomologist on his way to brush his teeth.
CHANG: (Laughter).
LAMBERT: Jim Tweed - he was camping south of Brisbane, Australia, just for fun, when on his way to the bathroom he happened to see this white, fluffy thing out of the corner of his eye.
JAMES TWEED: Initially, I probably just thought it was a bird dropping or something like that, but it was just the fact it was bright white, which is not something you normally see on a leaf in the forest understory. So I actually walked past it, and then I sort of double-took and thought, no, I need to probably look at this closer. And sure enough, I'm pretty glad I did 'cause, yeah, it turned out to be this spectacular beetle.
CHANG: Wait - what was so spectacular about this beetle?
LAMBERT: It's covered in these long, spindly white hairs. If you've ever seen the nature documentaries where they show ants or other insects infected by a fungus that's controlling their minds...
CHANG: (Laughter).
LAMBERT: ...They look kind of like that.
CHANG: Ew (laughter).
LAMBERT: And that fungal look might be sort of like the opposite of camouflage and actually deter predators who don't want to get a mouthful of fungus.
CHANG: Oh, very smart - so is this a new species?
LAMBERT: So it's even cooler - it's a new genus because the beetle was so different than other species around. The find is also unusual because biologists go to this area all the time, and yet this weird, hairy beetle went totally unnoticed. And no one has spotted it since, either, though Tweed has gone back a few times to look.
CHANG: Ooh, very mysterious - I hope this fungus beetle comes back. All right, what is next on your list?
LAMBERT: So we'll stick with small creatures - this one in the ocean.
CHANG: OK.
LAMBERT: So picture a panda bear dressed up in a skeleton Halloween costume...
CHANG: Aw.
LAMBERT: ...But shrink it down to less than an inch and put it underwater.
CHANG: (Laughter).
LAMBERT: You're more or less imagining a new species of sea squirt discovered off the coast of Japan.
CHANG: Wait - what is a sea squirt?
LAMBERT: Sea squirts are this - they're these invertebrates that look sort of like puffed-up little sleeping bags. And they live fixed to rocks underwater, and to eat, they suck in water and filter out phytoplankton. This new species, which they're literally calling the skeleton panda sea squirt, has what looks like...
CHANG: (Laughter) Catchy.
LAMBERT: Yeah. It has what looks like bone-white rib - what looks like a bone-white rib cage, but it's actually blood vessels that run through the gills.
CHANG: Wait. OK, so this thing has the face of a panda on a skeleton body, which sounds extremely confusing and frightening. Do they know why this thing looks like a skeletal panda?
LAMBERT: They have no idea.
CHANG: OK.
LAMBERT: But they do know that they live in groups of about four, so in pictures, they look kind of like a gaggle of trick-or-treaters.
CHANG: Oh, that's...
LAMBERT: Or that's what I think.
CHANG: ...Kind of cute, I guess. OK, so we've been to Australia. We've been to Japan. Where to next?
LAMBERT: Yeah. So the Amazon River Basin, where researchers discovered a new piranha-like species called a pacu, and they named it Myloplus sauron.
CHANG: Sauron, like the villain from "Lord Of The Rings"?
LAMBERT: Exactly. It's got this black slash that runs down its side and fiery orange patches on its body that makes it look a lot like the Eye of Sauron.
CHANG: (Laughter).
LAMBERT: But the fish itself isn't all that scary. It's actually just a vegetarian.
CHANG: Oh. All right. OK, all of this is very interesting, but here's my question. All of these species are being found at a moment where a lot of biodiversity around the world is in trouble, right? So how do you square that with these discoveries?
LAMBERT: Yeah. Many of these newly discovered species are relatively rare and already under threat from things like deforestation or climate change, so we risk losing them just as soon as we found them.
CHANG: That is NPR's Jonathan Lambert. Thank you so much, Jon.
LAMBERT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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