SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- California Academy of Sciences researchers say they discovered 94 new species this year, including 65 arthropods, 14 plants, eight fishes and five sea slugs.
Academy researchers said their findings, published in 29 different scientific papers, add to the record of life on Earth and will inform future studies on biodiversity, evolution, and conservation.
"Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments," said David Mindell, the academy's dean of science and research collections. "Creating a comprehensive inventory of life on our planet is critical for understanding and managing resources. Yet a great many life-forms remain to be discovered and described. The effort to determine the genealogical links among all life-forms, and describe their distributions, allows biologists to assess the relative distinctiveness of groups of organisms and various geographic regions, and helps determine conservation priorities."
Arthropods -- insects, arachnids and their relatives -- are the most diverse group of animals on Earth. Accordingly, the scientists said more than two-thirds of the new species on the academy's list are arthropods, including 36 new spider species from Yunnan Province, China.
The California Academy of Sciences conducts research in 11 scientific fields: anthropology, aquatic biology, botany, comparative genomics, entomology, geology, herpetology, ichthyology, invertebrate zoology, mammalogy and ornithology.
