BANGKOK: The monkey with a white ghost circle around his eyes is among the 224 new species listed in the latest updates to the World Wildlife Fund in the larger Mekong region.
Report of the conservation group, released on Wednesday, highlighting the need to protect rich biodiversity and habitat in the region, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
The species listed were found in 2020 but last year’s report was delayed.
The monkey is called Popa Langur, because it lives on a steep hill slope from Mt.
Popa Volcano in Myanmar.
That is the only new mammaly.
There are also dozens of reptiles, frogs and new lizards identified, fish and 155 plant species, including the only known Succulent bamboo species, found in Laos.
The Mekong region is a biodiversity hotspot and home for tigers, Asian elephants, Saola – very rare animals are also called Unicorn or Asian Spindlehorn – and thousands of other species.
Including this latest list, scientists have identified more than 3,000 new species in the region since 1997, WWF said.
Scientists use measurements and samples from the museum collection to compare and identify the main differences with newly discovered animal and plants features, the report said.
Learning these differences can help determine the range of species and threats to their survival, Thomas Ziegler, a curator at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology, said in introducing the report.
Identifying new species is complicated, and sometimes it can only be determined using various methods, such as frog calls and genetic data used to distinguish the frog little late cardamom, found height in the wildlife mountains.
Some species are found in more than one country, including bright orange twin snakes, which consume snails.
Popa Langur is identified based on genetic matching of the bone that has just gathered with the specimen of the British natural history museum collected more than a century ago, the report said.
The two main characteristics that distinguish were wide white rings around his eyes and the mustache pointing forward.
WWF, working with fauna and Flora International, captures monkeys using a camera trap in 2018.
FFI reported the discovery last year.
Monkeys are candidates that must be included as endangered species on the Red Union list for natural conservation, the report said, because only 200-250 were considered survival in the wild, in several places.
Underpointing the urgency of the work, more than 38,000 of the 138,000 species of the IUCN track threatened.
New type of begonia with reddish flowers and fruit such as berries is also found in the Myanmar plateau, where illegal mining and logging has become an increasingly terrible threat in the country, which is in the midst of political turmoil after military takeover.
last year.
Apart from human encroachment in tropical forests and other wild zones, many of the larger Mekongs are still slightly explored and every year dozens of new species are found – a glimmer of hope because there are so many extinct species.
Not all new species are found far in the forest.
One new plant species is a ginger plant called “bug bug” because of its spicy odor similar to a large beetle used thailes to make a kind of chili chili chili served with rice, the report said.
It was found in northeast Thailand, in a plant store.