New Species Found in New Guinea

Pink-Eyed Katydids

Piotr Naskrecki hunts katydids with sound. The insects are masters at blending in with their environment, especially at night when they're most active. So entomologists like Naskrecki, a researcher at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, trace the katydids through the darkness by their calls, using special equipment to translate the high-pitched chirping into sounds detectable by the human ear.

His work paid off: Naskrecki and David Rentz found at least 20 new species! This group, which is restricted to the forest’s canopy, is very difficult to collect, and thus virtually unstudied. This pink-eyed Caedicia probably feeds on flowers of the forest’s tall trees.

Tube-Nosed Fruit Bat

This is a previously seen but still undescribed species endemic to Papua New Guinea, called the tube-nosed fruit bat or Nyctimene sp. It hails from the Muller Range mountains and does not yet have a name but has been found in other parts of New Guinea. It is likely restricted (or endemic) to hill forests on the island. Fruit bats are important seed dispersers in tropical forests.

Super Tiny Frogs

Stephen Richards traced the soft scratching call of this tiny, long nosed frog into a steep muddy gully in New Guinea's remote Muller Range during a scientific expedition in September 2009. Small enough to sit comfortably on a thumb-nail and hidden from view under a tangle of roots in pouring rain this undescribed frog of the genus Choerophryne nearly eluded the RAP team altogether. Its position given away by one cricket-like call too many, this strange species subsequently turned out to be new to science.