81 episodes
New Species New Species Podcast
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- Science
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4.5 • 15 Ratings
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Just a fraction of the species on our planet are known to science, but more are described and published every day. This podcast talks to the authors of these new species to get the behind-the-scenes stories of how new species are found and named, as well as why these discoveries should matter to everyone, not just scientists. Join us on our journey to better understand the wonderful biodiversity of our planet!
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), and support the podcast at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod
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Basics 1: Collecting with Evan Waite
In part 1 of Taxonomy Basics, Evan Waite from Arizona State University teaches us all about collecting entomological specimens. From which traps to use to tips on sharing your collection with others, Evan gives us all of the details with some great stories along the way.
Evan is a coleopterist and PhD Candidate at Arizona State University. His work focuses on ground beetles, but he’s broadly interested in beetle diversity and has a personal collection that includes over 2,000 specimens from all across the arthropod world. His collecting and taxonomic work has taken him across the country to many unique habitats, as well as a variety of entomological collections.
Taxonomy Basics is a three part series on basic components of species description including collecting, preserving, and describing new species. This series focuses on entomological specimens, but has concepts that work across disciplines. Listen in as Evan Waite, Ashleigh Wiffin, and Marc Milne share their guidelines and discuss important concepts in taxonomy, curation, and beyond.
Connect with Evan online: @Evantomology on all platforms
Read Evan’s paper about collecting bias, including a case study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10323768/
Watch Evan’s talk “A Journey from Bugs to Birds” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asZWkrmAXZ4&t=3s
Chris Grinter’s website with a guide to collecting permits:
https://www.theskepticalmoth.com/collecting-permits/
UC Davis guide: How to Collect Insects: https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/how-collect-insects
A transcript of this episode can be found here:
Evan Waite - Transcript
Episode image credit: Evan Waite
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)
Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com
If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod -
Three New Red Devil Spiders with Adrià Bellvert and Miquel Arnedo
“Another spider paper?!” you might ask. “More new spiders, what’s so interesting?” Well in addition to a revised genus and three new species, Adrià Bellvert and Miquel Arnedo’s most recent publication highlights some of the unique challenges taxonomists deal with as they work to untangle species relationships. “I think that the important part [of this paper] is it interfaces very well, it summarizes very well the kind of problems that.. we have to address when we are trying to understand the diversity of mega diverse groups,” says Miquel. Things like deteriorated specimens, missing label information, and difficulty collecting also contribute. But by the end of their story we see that time, effort, and collaboration can bring about some really important findings.
Miquel and Adrià’s paper “Integrating museum collections and molecules reveals genus-level synonymy and new species in red devil spiders (Araneae, Dysderidae) from the Middle East and Central Asia” is in volume 921 of the Journal of European Taxonomy
It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5852/ejt.2024.921.2429
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Adrià Bellvert and Miquel Arnedo - Transcript
New Species: Dysdera jaegeri, Dysdera naouelae, and Dysdera kourosh
Episode image credit: Adrià Bellvert
You can follow Adrià and Miquel on Twitter: @AdriaBellvert and @spidersysevo (Miquel’s lab)
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)
Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com
If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod -
Five New Skinks with Ishan Agarwal
Skinks are one of the most diverse families of lizards, and Ishan Agarwal studies skinks in India, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. From the forest to the lab to the museum, Ishan shares his experiences investigating a group of cryptic skinks that had quite a few surprises to share, including biology and behavior. What is it about skinks that makes them so captivating? How and why do scientists designate neotypes? Why is a slingshot part of a skink-catching field kit? Find out in this episode of the New Species Podcast.
Read Ishan’s paper here: https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.74.e110674
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Ishan Agarwal - Transcript
New Genus: Dravidoseps
New Species: Dravidoseps gingeeensis, Dravidoseps jawadhuensis, Dravidoseps kalakadensis, Dravidoseps srivilliputhurensis, and Dravidoseps tamilnaduensis.
Episode image courtesy of Ishan Agarwal
Follow Ishan on Instagram: @Geckoella
Dropbox link to Ishan's papers: https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/IA%20publications
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)
Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com
If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod -
Tautonyms and Etymology with Mike Stephan
Mike Stephan is a lawyer obsessed with scientific etymology, specifically tautonyms, binomial names in which the generic name and species name are exactly the same. Scientific naming conventions and customs have a rich history, and as Mike says, “[taxonomic names] in some perhaps unintended way tell the greater story of human anthropology and history.” Come along for the ride as we discuss etymologies of all shapes, sizes, and redundancies and learn a little about people along the way.
Order Mike’s book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tautonyms-michael-j-stephan/1143958127?ean=9798350910759
Read Mike’s recent paper proposing that botany allow tautonyms:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tax.12902
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Mike Stephan - Transcript
Interview with Stefano Mammola about spider names: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/jxWszZc24Hb
Interview with Alireza Zamani about a new species named after Brian: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/VhSS5Lf24Hb
Follow Mike on Instagram (and submit your draw-tonym): @Tautonyms
Episode image courtesy of Mike Stephan
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)
Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com
If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod -
A New Snakeworm Gnat with Thalles Pereira
There are no snakes in Alaska, so what’s that snakelike shape crossing the road? Few people would guess it’s actually thousands of fly larvae moving in a very peculiar pattern that gives the snakeworm gnat their common name. Dr. Thalles Pereira and his coauthors spent lots of time rearing, observing, and sharing their findings with their community in the process of describing this new species, and use citizen science data of this behavior in addition to morphological and molecular analyses in this paper. Listen in as Thalles brings us through the labs and back roads of Alaska to learn why gnats are so special!
Thalles Pereira’s paper “Discovery of snakeworm gnats in Alaska: a new species of Sciara meigen (Diptera: Sciaridae) based on morphological, molecular, and citizen science data” is in volume 6 issue 2 of Integrative Systematics.
It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.18476/2023.673937
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Thalles Pereira - Transcript
New Species: Sciara serpens
Episode image courtesy of Thalles Pereira via Integrative Systematics Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History
Check out Thalles’ Researchgate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thalles-Pereira-2
Video of the snakeworm larval behavior: https://doi.org/10.7299/X7WM1DQ9
View these specimens and their observational records on Arctos: https://arctos.database.museum/search.cfm?guid_prefix=UAM%3AEnto%2CUAMObs%3AEnto&scientific_name=Sciara%20serpens&scientific_name_match_type=match&family=Sciaridae
Springtail antifreeze protein paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60060-z
Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)
Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com
If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod -
Community Survey and Updates
This is a short episode to share some thoughts and feedback from this year's New Species community survey, as well as some updates on what is to come for the podcast.
Take the community survey here before March 1st: https://forms.gle/ayoZfXzadr2kd3st5
Check out our Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod
And the Website:
www.newspeciespodcast.net
Customer Reviews
Awesome
I love learning about new topics that I’m not initially familiar with and this podcast keeps it extremely interesting!
Please invest in some better mics and make the show less scripted
As a taxonomist and phylogeneticist, I want to love this show. But after so many episodes I would’ve thought that the hosts would’ve invested in some better recording equipment. The hosts always have a weird echo, and the guests (probably recording from just a zoom recording with their internal computer mic) sound so muffled it’s almost impossible to understand them. It’s so bad sometimes I end up shutting off the episode because I can’t understand a single thing that’s being said. Not only that, but while some of the conversations are conversational, others feel like I’m listening to a rehearsed research talk at lunch seminar … which …is dry and often boring. If you want this podcast to grow and to be listened to by a wider audience, I think you really need to: 1. Get better equipment, 2. learn to edit better (there are plenty of podcast editing/sound design classes on linked in and YouTube), and, 3. maybe take notes from other popular science podcasts. 4. loosen up. Stop reading from a script.
If you love Science Friday, you should subscribe
This show is awesome, I was not disappointed. They are ready to go, sound is great, host and guests are fantastic