200 new species found in WNBP

A TINY 2cm frog, a mouse with a white-tipped tail and a white-flowered rhododendron are among more than 200 new species discovered in remote mountain rainforests of West New Britain, conservationists said.
The new species of animals and plants were found during two months of surveying in the rugged and little-explored Nakanai and Muller mountain ranges last year, Conservation International announced on Wednesday.
The findings included two new mammals, 24 species of frog, nine new plants, nearly 100 new insects including damselflies, crickets and ants and about 100 spiders.
The mouse with the white-tipped tail, at least one ant and several of the crickets, or katydids, were so different from other known species and they each represented an entirely new genus, the scientists said.
One of the newlydiscovered katydids had exceptionally long spiny hind legs which it uses to jab at anything that threatened it, one new species has pink eyes and another has emerald-green patterning.
They were uncovered by two scientific teams coordinated by Conservation International’s rapid assessment programme (RAP), in partnership with PNG’s Institute for Biological Research and conservation organisation A Rocha International.
The forest-cloaked Nakanai mountains host cave systems and some of the world’s largest underground rivers.
In the Nakanai surveys, scientists discovered a yellow-spotted frog, found only high up in the mountains in the wet rainforests, the mouse and the tiny ceratobatrachid frog, which is 2cm long and calls for a mate in the late afternoon – unlike most frogs in the area which call at night.
Conservation International herpetologist and RAP team leader Stephen Richards described said the ceratobatrachid belonged to a group of frogs previously only known from the Solomon Islands.
In the Muller range, researchers found what what they described as a “spectacular variety” of insects, spiders and frogs.
Also found during these surveys was an abundant new species of Rhododendron plant with large white flowers.
The scientists hoped the discoveries would help secure World Heritage status for the two areas in the face of pressure on PNG’s forests from subsistence agriculture, logging and oil palm production.
“With both the Nakanai Mountains and Muller Range on Unesco’s World Heritage tentative list, we hope that news of these amazing new species will bolster the nomination of these spectacular environments for World Heritage status,” Richards said.
Conservation International had been working with the provincial government and local communities in the Nakanai range to protect a large tract of rainforest from logging.