For some people, a box of 100-year-old bee flies might seem daunting, but for Lisa Rollinson and Allan Cabrero, It was an exciting challenge. As part of a Smithsonian-based internship, Lisa worked with Allan to identify the flies, creating a new key for several genera and discovering a new species along the way.

Flies aren’t the most charismatic group, but Lisa sees them as an unexpected opportunity to introduce people to taxonomy. “I think science can be really good for getting people curious and getting them invested in things they don’t think about very often, like flies,” she says. “I think that people are often more scientific than they actually think.” Listen in for a great conversation about bee flies and making accessible taxonomic resources that will hopefully stand the test of time. Plus, learn the sweet naming decision that makes this new species the “Sister Bug.”

Lisa Rollinson and Allan Cabrero’s paper “Species discovery in Southern African bee flies (Diptera, Bombyliidae): A new species in the revised genus Enica (Macquart, 1834)” is in volume 66 Issue 1 of African Invertebrates.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/afrinvertebr.66.129611

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Lisa and Allan - Transcript

New Species: Enica adelphe

Episode image credit: Lisa Rollinson

Lucid Builder keys: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v4/enica

Follow Lisa on Twitter/X: @LisaRollinson5

Follow Allan on Instagram: @allan_the_entomologist

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Shantanu Joshi is fascinated with creatures of all kinds, but especially damselflies, the small quick fliers of the order Odonata. In this episode he takes us deep into the forests of Northeast India, a place of immense beauty and interfering colonial history. Undersampling and poor specimen quality are a few reasons the diversity of this area is not well known, and Shantanu and his coauthors are determined to fill in the gaps. As with his project The Odonata of India, Shantanu shares in incredible detail the morphology, ecology, and even behaviors of these two new species, and discusses what their presence means for two unique and isolated habitats.

Shantanu’s paper “Description of Protosticta khasia sp. nov. and Yunnanosticta siangi sp. nov., with new records of P. samtsensis from Northeast India” is in volume 5448 of Zootaxa.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5448.3.2

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Shantanu Joshi - Transcript

Check out Shantanu’s amazing website, Odonata of India: https://www.indianodonata.org/

And follow him on Instagram: @odonataofindia

New Species: Protosticta khasia and Yunnanosticta siangi

Episode image credit: Shantanu Joshi

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

What if I told you that the oldest known biotic association of arthropods is a piece of Lebanese amber from the Cretaceous period? At the same time that flowering plants were diversifying, astigmatid mites were finding a very convenient way to get around: on the backs of termites. Can mites and termites be friends? How does one identify a tiny mite specimen without damaging its equally-important host? Learn the answers to these questions and more from Dr. Hemen Sendi on this episode of the New Species Podcast.

Hemen’s paper “The oldest continuous association between astigmatid mites and termites preserved in Cretaceous amber reveals the evolutionary significance of phoresy” is in volume 25 of BMC Ecology and Evolution.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02351-5

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Hemen Sendi - Transcript

New Species: Plesioglyphus lebanotermi

Episode image credit: Hemen Sendi

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Sunflowers come in all shapes and sizes, and the group has gained a new member. Nicknamed the “woolly devil,” Ovicula biradiata is the product of the amazing bi-national collaboration between taxonomists, conservationists, and community scientists in Big Bend National Park. But it comes at a time when the future of National Parks is uncertain.

“I think this particular discovery has inspired a lot of people outside of the world of biodiversity science to recognize that we still have a lot of work to do in terms of just describing the biodiversity in environments as iconic as the US National Parks” says Isaac Lichter Marck, one of the taxonomists involved in the description. “We assume that because it's found within a US national park that it'll be within an environment that's preserved into the future. That's been the ideal of national parks. But I think in the current reality we have to be cautious about that assumption.”

Listen in to learn more about Isaac and his work, the tremendous effort that went into this discovery, and what the future might look like for this little plant and others.

Isaac Lichter Marck’s paper “Ovicula biradiata, a new genus of Compositae from Big Bend National Park in Trans-Pecos Texas” is in issue 252 of Phytokeys

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.252.137624

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Isaac Lichter Marck - Transcript

New Species: Ovicula biradiata

Episode image credit: Cathy Hoyt

Other articles about this new species:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5308248/wooly-devil-new-species-genus-big-bend

https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/news/new-plant-species-discovered-in-big-bend.htm

Articles about cuts to National Parks staff and funding:

www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx7kez4vx2o

www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5304434/what-doge-cuts-could-mean-for-national-park-visitors

www.npca.org/articles/6614-five-ways-president-trump-s-executive-orders-could-harm-national-parks

Follow Isaac on social media:

Bluesky: @ca-naturalist.bsky.social

Instagram: California_naturalist

Twitter: @ca-naturalist

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Someone who identifies as a nature lover might not be excited to see trees cut down or large machines rolling across the forest floor. Science doesn’t always align with everyone’s expectations, and often scientists have to explain their work to audiences that aren’t interested or who don’t agree. Ethan Tapper has many of these conversations. Ethan works to manage Vermont forests sustainably and help them thrive, which often includes practices that might seem destructive or contrary to a forest’s best interests. Science is about communicating, and Ethan has worked hard to use communication as a tool to make caring for forests a community issue.

What is the role of a scientist in explaining their work? How do we communicate unfamiliar scientific topics to people who already might have preconceived notions about them? These are some of the questions Ethan tackles in this episode.

Ethan’s book can be found here, and wherever books are sold:

https://ethantapper.com/book

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Ethan Tapper - Transcript

Follow Ethan on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and TikTok: @howtoloveaforest

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast), and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like free bonus episodes or would like to support the podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Amanda and I discuss and review Bats! (1999)

Our ratings:

Enjoyability: 🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇

Accuracy: 🦇🦇 🦇 🦇 🦇

This episode is the first in a new bonus series where I watch B-list horror movies with scientists and we rate them on accuracy and enjoyability.

All episodes are free, for future episodes you will just have to sign up through Patreon at Patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod. If you choose to support the podcast with a paid subscription, it is really appreciated! My 2025 goal is to cover the cost of hosting the website (about $80/year) which would be $7/month.

Amanda is a PhD candidate at Portland State University specializing in bat ecology and evolution. You can find her work here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Grunwald
Listen to her New Species Podcast episode: https://www.newspeciespodcast.net/all-episodes/a-new-bat-with-amanda-grunwald

On an expedition to Madagascar, Matjaž Gregorič and his research team came upon a damaged termite nest that had a few other invertebrate visitors. When they experimentally damaged the nest again, they found two unexpected things: spiders ballooning in to prey on the termites as they rebuilt, and hopeful ants standing by to steal termites from those spiders. It created what the authors called “a perilous Malagasy triad”, a three-way predator-prey-kleptoparasite interaction that tells a very interesting story about chemical signaling and arthropod behavior. As a bonus, they identified the spider involved as a brand new genus and species, named Vigdisia praesidens to honor Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s first female president. Listen in as researcher Matjaž Gregorič gives us the full story, as well as his thoughts on why it’s important to pursue science for science’s sake.

Matjaž Gregorič’s paper “A perilous Malagasy triad: a spider (Vigdisia praesidens, gen. and sp. nov.) and an ant compete for termite food” is in the July 14th issue of New Zealand Journal of Zoology.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1080/03014223.2024.2373185

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Matjaž Gregorič - Transcript

New Species: Vigdisia praesidens

More on Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the world’s first democratically-elected female president (Iceland, 1980-1996): https://www.councilwomenworldleaders.org/vigdiacutes-finnbogadoacutettir.html

An article about this paper: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/new-spider-species-named-after-icelandic-president/

Videos of the kleptoparasitic behavior: https://www.youtube.com/@ezlab7631/videos

Episode image credit: Matjaž Gregorič

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

Rodrigo’s paper “Idiopyrgus Pilsbry, 1911 (Gastropoda, Tomichiidae): a relict genus radiating into subterranean environments” is in November 8th issue of Zoosystematics and Evolution

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.100.136428

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Rodrigo Salvador - Transcript

Follow Rodrigo on X/Bluesky: @Kraken_Scholar and @krakenscholar.bsky.social

Follow the Journal of Geek Studies on X/Bluesky:@JGeekStudies and @jgeekstudies.bsky.social

New Species: Idiopyrgus eowynae, Idiopyrgus meriadoci

Episode image credit: Rodrigo Salvador

Journal of Geek Studies: https://jgeekstudies.org/

Pensoft article, “The Snellowship of the Ring”: https://blog.pensoft.net/2024/11/11/the-shellowship-of-the-ring-two-new-snail-species-named-after-tolkien-characters/

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast)

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod