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Piotr Naskrecki hunts katydids with sound. The insects are masters at blending in with their environment, especially at night when they’re most active. So entomologists like Naskrecki, a researcher at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, trace the katydids through the darkness by their calls, using special equipment to translate the high-pitched chirping into sounds detectable by the human ear.
His work paid off: Naskrecki and David Rentz found at least 20 new species! This group, which is restricted to the forest’s canopy, is very difficult to collect, and thus virtually unstudied. This pink-eyed Caedicia probably feeds on flowers of the forest’s tall trees.
Researchers found only two of this super-spiny new ant species, which represents an entirely new genus. The worker ants were found in the canopy of a fallen tree at mid-elevation (1600m); entomologist Andrea Lucky suspects that this group of ants live up high in trees. The ants that live in tree canopies are hard to reach, and therefore little studied. Because this species is unknown, and quite different from any other known genus of ants, Andrea and colleagues are currently using its DNA to determine the placement of this ant species among its closest relatives.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/10/06/new-species-new-guinea/#slide=1#ixzz21BFSQcEQ
