E2: New Species— Daddy Long Legs from New Caledonia

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Gonzalo Giribet, is an invertebrate biologist working at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he is Curator of Invertebrates and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Gonzalo is the first author of a recent paper about four new species of daddy long legs (also called harvestmen or opilionids) from New Caledonia!

We learn that these harvestmen are—at the most—only a couple of millimeters long, how new species are named, and why we should care about new species—even ones that are so small!

The paper was published in Invertebrate Systematics (Vol 35, pages 59-89), with the title "A revised phylogeny of the New Caledonian endemic genus Troglosiro (Opiliones: Cyphophthalmi: Troglosironidae) with the description of four new species."

The paper may be viewed here, and downloaded for free for the month of February, 2021: https://www.publish.csiro.au/IS/IS20042 For more information about Dr. Giribet, you can follow him on Twitter (@ggiribet), visit his website (https://oeb.harvard.edu/people/gonzalo-giribet ), or read about him on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Giribet )!

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and like the podcast page on Facebook. Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom. If you would like to support this podcast, you can do so on Patreon.