Description of a new species in the genus Biswamoyopterus

This week flying squirrels were in the news, but it wasn’t the Namdapha flying squirrel making the headlines, rather, a newly described species within the elusive Biswamoyopterus genus. The new species, named Biswamoyopterus gaoligongensis or the Mount Gaoligong flying squirrel is just the third species within this genus to be described, alongside the Laotian giant flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterus laoensis), discovered in 2013, and the target of our project, the Namdapha flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterus biswasi).

 

*fig 1 taken from Li et al. 2019

Interestingly , the location of the Mount Gaoligong flying squirrel discovery, helps fill in the previously vast expanse that separated the Namdapha and Laotian members of the genus, this potentially indicates that this group is much more widespread than previously thought, and provides hope of finding more members of this cryptic group. Given that all three species within this group have been found only once, there remain a lot of unanswered questions and gaps in our knowledge. This discovery certainly provides added importance and optimism into our project, where ascertaining firstly if the Namdapha flying squirrel is still present, and secondly understanding its true distribution will be vital goals in our quest to better understanding and conserving the species as well as our knowledge of this genus. Given the vast expanse of the search area, who knows what other surprises might come along?. The finding of another species also provides opportunities for collaboration and potentially methodological guidance in our own search.

Finding ‘lost’ species can seem like a needle in a haystack type activity, but in the last couple of years we’ve seen numerous species rediscovered that we believed to be lost. For example, the San Quintin Kangaroo Rat, thought to be a casualty of intensive agriculture, the species was recorded for the first time in 32 years in the scrublands of Baja California in Mexico in 2017. The Vanzolini’s Bald-faced Saki, a new world monkey that an expedition recorded for the first time in 61 years and the Jackson’s Climbing Salamander, 42 years after it was lost to science was rediscovered in the Guatemalan mountains, the first success of Global Wildlife Conservation’s Search for Lost Species program. Stories such as these give rise to the optimism that other species thought lost can be pulled back from the brink and highlight once more the resilience of nature. This is coupled with the frequency at which new discoveries are still occurring, for example, the number of recognized mammal species has increased over time from 4,631 species in 1993 to 5,416 in 2005, to 6,495 species in 2018.

As we move closer to the expedition, we are continuing to finalise details including our survey equipment and methodology. We’ll continue to provide updates as we get closer to launch day.

Thanks for your continued support!