Besides being a great place to go salamander watching, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park seems to be a great place to go new species hunting as well. An ATBI revealed hundreds of new species both to science and to the Park, but the list of new species isn’t exactly made up of species that would make the front cover of Newsweek.

The list includes many ostensibly insignificant species such as various new species of algae, mayflies, mites, and water bears. Water bears aren’t the mammalian cuddly type of furry bears most of us are familiar with, but water bears are tiny segmented animals that are known for living in various extreme environments, including hot springs, ice, the bottom of the ocean, and “some can survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151°C (303°F), 1,000 times more radiation than any other animal, nearly a decade without water, and can also survive in a vacuum like that found in space.”

The bulk of the new species are bacteria but there are quite a few new species from the orders Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). As of December 1, 2007, species new to science included 27 new crustaceans, 1 new millipede, 7 new mollusks, and 21 new slime molds amongst many others.

Recording and conserving such biodiversity is extremely important, and not to sound cliché, but all creatures are connected and need each other. Although as a species we perceive ourselves as largely disassociated from nature, we need healthy aquatic environments, natural landscapes, and biodiversity for our survival and psychological well being.

To see the full list of new species from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park go here and to see some of the remarkable illustrations by Nancy Lowe of the new species discovered in the the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, go here.

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