Tuesday, January 06, 2009

WIRED's Top 10 New Organisms

WIRED names the Top 10 new organisms discovered (or, in one case, rediscovered) in 2008. You've seen most of them in this blog, but it's an interesting collection, ranging from the olive-backed forest robin (Stiphrornis pyrrholaeumus, from Gabon) to a new species of bacteria found alive in a Greenland glacier after being frozen for an estimated 120,000 years. Another weird one is a parasitic nematode worm of Central and South America, Myrmeconema neotropicum, that makes ants' abdomens swell up and turn red to look like berries to attract hungry birds, which then spread the parasite in their droppings.

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