New Species

Shasta Henry, a Ph.D. candidate in entomology in the Discipline of Geography and Spatial Science at the University of Tasmania, is my guest! We discuss the significance of the name given to this new species, why it took 79 years to give this new species a name, how they shoot defensive stuff from their butts, and the importance of cockroaches in natural environments! The title of the paper is “Polyzosteria cockroaches in Tasmania (Blattodea: Blattidae: Polyzosteriinae) represent a new, endemic

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Michael Sharkey, is a Professor Emeritus. He talks to us about his paper published February 2nd in ZooKeys wherein he describes 403—yes, 403!!!—new species of braconid parasitoid wasps from Costa Rica! Dr. Sharkey explains to us what a braconid wasp is, what a parasitoid is, how he and his coauthors could find 403 new species for a single paper, how to come up with so many names for so many species, and why we all need to know more about these amazing little

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Rosemary Gillespie, is a professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, professor in the Division of Insect Biology, and Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at the University of California - Berkeley. She talks to us about her paper that will be published in the next issue of Invertebrate Systematics wherein she and her coauthors describe *eight* new species of Happy Face spiders from Hawaii. We talk about why these spiders are called Happy Face

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Adam Cossette, is a vertebrate paleontologist and an Assistant Professor of Anatomy working in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Dr. Cossette talks to us about his recent description of a 60 million year old fossil that is a new species of “alligator,” Bottosaurus fustidens. We talk about how this fossil from Texas was found in an Iowa museum collection, how fossils form, why calling this an “alligator”

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Gonzalo Giribet, is an invertebrate biologist working at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he is Curator of Invertebrates and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Gonzalo is the first author of a recent paper about four new species of daddy long legs (also called harvestmen or opilionids) from New Caledonia! We learn that these harvestmen are—at the most—only a couple of millimeters long, how new species are named, and why we should care

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Mark Scherz, is one of the authors of a recent paper about a new genus (!!) of tiny frogs, Nanohyla, from Southeast Asia, the "pygmy narrow-mouthed frogs." We learn about these amazing frogs that are 10 - 15 millimeters (about a half inch) long, get to listen to the call of a possibly new species of frog, and talk with Dr. Scherz about how to decide that a new genus is needed for this group of frogs. Additionally, Dr. Scherz discusses why it's important for people to