Friday, 31 December 2021

New Species: A Lockdown Spin-off?

The Covid19 lockdowns ruled out most travel by taxonomists at London's Natural History Museum. This caused these identifiers to concentrate their efforts on existing collections, rather than seeking new material (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/30/natural-history-museum-500-new-species-2021-aoe). The result has been the identification of a total of more than 550 new species in 2021. These include 6 new species of UK dinosaurs, 90 new beetles and 5 snakes. More than half the new species were tiny copepods, from a 60 year old collection assembled by French husband and wife team, Claude and Francoise Monniot. Their copepod collection finally got round to being evaluated by two taxonomists who were nearing retirement. As they say, 'it's an ill wind'!
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