Union Minister of State, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Shri Babul Supriyo on October 9, 2020 released ‘Animal Discoveries 2019’ at an event at Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in Howrah, West Bengal.
- It lists 368 faunal species as new to science and 116 species as being spotted for the first time in India.
- The publication provides the details about 360 new species, 4 subspecies and 4 fossil species as well as 116 species spotted for the first time in India.
- ‘Plant Discoveries 2019’ lists 180 new plant species and 73 species spotted for the first time in the country.
Some of the discoveries includes:
A rock-dwelling gecko, Cnemaspis anandani, endemic to the Western Ghats
Sphaerotheca magadha, a burrowing frog discovered in the farm fields of Jharkhand.
Enoplotrupes tawangensis, a dung beetle from Tawang.
A wild ginger variety, Amomum nagamiense, discovered from the forest behind Kohina Zoo in Nagaland.
A wild fern, Pteris subiriana, found not just in Kerala but also Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
- The number of plant species found in India, according to the 2019 BSI compilation, is 50,012 and accounts roughly for 12% of all flora species in the world.
- Both the ZSI and BSI have been releasing ‘Animal Discoveries’ and ‘Plant Discoveries’ since 2007 and this is the 13th publication in the series.
(Source: The Hindu)
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