India adds 641 new animal species, 339 new plant taxa in 2023

Context

• A new species of turmeric in Manipur and a new kind of bat in Karnataka are among the plant and animal species which were discovered in India in 2023, according to data released by Union Environment Minister.

Key Findings of Animal Discoveries 2023 and Plant Discoveries 2023

• These are among the 641 new species added to Indian fauna in 2023, including 442 entirely new species and 199 species which have been newly recorded in the country.
• India also added 339 taxa to its plant database, including 326 species, and 13 infraspecific taxa.
• Of these, 171 taxa are new to science and 168 taxa are new distributional records from India.
  • A taxa can refer to a sub-species or variety of a plant species.
• Among the new plant discoveries in 2023 were Curcuma kakchingense, a new species of turmeric found in Manipur’s Kakching, and Asystasia venui, a flowering plant discovered in the Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah in West Bengal.

  

• Significant animal discoveries include Capra himalayensis, which proves that the Himalayan Ibex, distributed in the trans-Himalayan ranges of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, is a distinct species from the Siberian Ibex. 
• Miniopterus srinii, a new species of bent-winged bat was also found in the Kodagu district of Karnataka.
• Most of the new animal discoveries were reported from southern India. Kerala topped the list, followed by West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
• The vast majority of these new discoveries among fauna have been recorded in the invertebrate category.
• West Bengal recorded the highest number of new plant discoveries, followed by Kerala and Uttarakhand.
• New discoveries include wild relatives of many potential horticultural, agricultural, medicinal, and ornamental plants such as begonias, impatiens or balsams, legumes, zingibers, and orchids.
• The hotspot regions such as Western Ghats, and North Eastern Regions have contributed 14% of total discoveries.
• High endemism is reported from the Western Ghats hill streams of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Three genera such as Anathana, Latidens and Nilgiritragus are monotypic and found only in India.
• Salim Ali’s fruit bat (Latidens salimalii) is a rare megabat species in the monotypic genus Latidens. The Madras Treeshrew is from the Anathana genus.

Back to Basics

• Animal Discoveries 2023, an annual publication by the Zoological Survey of India, an premier institution dealing with animal taxonomy which completed 109 years recently.
• Plant Discoveries 2023, an annual publication by the Botanical Survey of India, a premier institution which has been working on plant taxonomy for about 120 years.

Source; TH & HT

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