My most fascinating top-10 list is not a ranking of sports figures, decadent desserts, movies or slang. It features a cartwheeling spider, a wasp mother with a morbid approach, a frog that gives birth to tadpoles, and a fish that creates intricate circles by wriggling on the sea floor.
The intriguing list was culled from 18,000 new species named during 2014. It was released in May by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s International Institute for Species Exploration.
While finding 18,000 new species is impressive, let’s keep this in perspective: species are going extinct faster than they are being identified. Scientists theorize that 10 million species await discovery, adding to the nearly 2 million species named to date.
Here are a few of the newbies. Remember that the 2015 list reflected the species named in 2014, not necessarily discovered that year.
Cartwheeling spider (Cebrennus rechenbergi). When threatened, this nocturnal Moroccan flic-flac spider cartwheels its way out of danger if its threatening posture fails to deter. The escape is a mix of running and cartwheeling, the latter twice as fast (6.6 feet per second) as running, according to researchers. It usually flips forward but can do a back flip. In gymnastics, a back handspring is called a flic-flac. It’s a last-ditch effort, however, because it’s energy-sapping. In the desert heat, too many cartwheels could kill instead of save.
Clever mother (Deuteragenia ossarium). Chinese bone-house wasps’ distinctive nests are cells built in hollow stems. It kills a spider, eats its non-essential parts, and leaves the alive body in one cell for future nourishment for the larva. Once the egg is deposited with the spider, mother seals off the cell and hunts for the next spider. She fills the final cell with 10 or more dead ants. Although she abandons the nest, the corpses’ chemical scent lingers for days, deterring parasites that hunt for wasp larvae by smell. Call it olfactory camouflage.
Do-it-yourselfer (Limnonectes larvaepartus). Almost all of the 6,455 (and counting) frog species have external fertilization. The newest Indonesian fanged frog species is one of maybe a dozen species that doesn’t follow the crowd. It has evolved internal fertilization and gives birth to tadpoles.
Crop-circle artist (Torquigener albomaculosus). The mystery to the intricate geometric designs about 6 feet in diameter on the seabed off Japan has been solved. The male of a new species of pufferfish creates single-use spawning nests by swimming and wriggling in the sand to attract females. The nests have a spoke-like geometry with double edges and radiating troughs (the Internet has photographs). The ridges and grooves minimize ocean current at the center of the circle, where the eggs are laid. Loosely translated, Torquis Generare means ‘circle builder.’
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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