species

Toyota's rivals have long complained that the popular Prius hybrid has a less-than-green legacy due to its manufacturing process. Now the car maker has flashed its green thumb by creating two new species of flower that help offset the carbon emissions from the Prius plant in Japan.

The new version of the cherry sage plant can absorb harmful greenhouse gases, such as nitrogen oxide, through its leaves. And Toyota's variant of the gardenia acts as a natural humidifier by creating water vapor in the air, to help cool the factory grounds, reducing the energy required for air conditioners.

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Scientists estimate the number of species on Earth to be close to 10 million -- and each year, the number of known species grows. The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists recently released its "Top 10" list of new species described in 2008.

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Lazy? Shy? Live in a cave? Those might not be positive attributes for the average human, but they sure are good for animals trying to survive in a changing environment. According to a new study in the journal The American Naturalist, beasts that hibernate, burrow, or crawl into holes in things are less likely to be listed as endangered than those that don’t.

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Darwin's visit to the Galapagos in 1835 missed finding a new species that has eluded generations of scientists until now – the "rosada" land iguana.

New to science, yes, but the iguana's lineage marks one of the oldest cases of divergence from other species on the Galapagos. Scientists were surprised to date the species' origin to more than five million years ago, before some of the islands had even formed.

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Last spring, scientists from the Queensland Museum in South Brisbane, Australia, discovered this new coral species hanging underneath a rocky ledge about 50 feet deep off the northern end of Australia’s Lizard Island. They now hope to classify the coral, along with hundreds of other recently discovered marine invertebrates.

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If earwigs, centipedes or spiders give you the creepy crawlies, quit while you're ahead. Otherwise, meet "Chan's megastick" (Phobaeticus chani). Recently named the world's longest living insect, the thin, bamboo-looking stick insect—best known for its camouflaging abilities to deter predators—was discovered in Southeast Asia's island of Borneo.

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Sometimes the smallest discovery lends itself to the biggest insight. That certainly was the case for University of Texas at Austin graduate student Christian Rabeling, who found a new ant species in the Amazon that is likely the descendent of one of the first ants to evolve on Earth more than 120 million years ago.

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Lots of amphibians (a third to a half of all species) are dying, and their deaths are the breaking-edge of what many scientists are calling the first mass extinction since the dinosaurs checked out 65 million years ago, researchers say in a new paper published online in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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