On the Topic of Lists and Roundups

One of the strikingly fascinating features of this wet planet of ours - one of the innumerable wonderful things - is its sheer biological diversity and how little we know of it. We still, to this day and every day thereon, are discovering and will continue to find new species that shed light on perhaps as much of our pasts as our future. Each year, The International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) takes a look at everything gathered in a given year, which is certainly no short list, and arranges them into a Top Ten. 

Last year's winners included a one of the most venomous snake on the planet, a 75 million year old duck-billed dinosaur, and my favorite, a rhinoceros beetle that looks like Dim, the blue rhinoceros beetle from A Bug's Life, recalling the age old question brought up by the likes of Oscar Wilde and as far back as Ovid of whether life imitates art or art imitates life. 

Of this years winners, the Deep Blue Chromis, pictured at the top of the page, gave up its long bout of reclusion in the deep reefs of the Pacific Ocean near Palau, reminding us how very little we know of our oceans, especially in the abyssal reefs. Considering the Earth itself is roughly 2/3 water, it's rather stunning when you think that we haven't even explored half of our own oceans; meanwhile we're still learning about and discovering new histories and species on dry land. Space exploration aside, we've got plenty of discoveries to be made here to add a little bit of breadth and depth to our diminutive knowledge of our own planet.  Speaking of diminutive, two of the top species, one of which also made Wired's Science's Cutest Thing Ever rankings, are downright lilliputian: 

the world's smallest snake and the world's smallest seahorse. The Barbados threadsnake measures about four inches long and can fit itself on top of a quarter, while this pygmy seahorse isn't even half an inch. Not everything was about being smaller than its peers. On the other side of the spectrum, the world's longest insect comes in at a gun-wrenching 23 inches and resembles a thin, spiny branch. 

But given my proclivity towards Palm Trees, my favorite and most tragic would have to be the rare Tahina Palm, found in Madagascar. With no direct relation to any of the other 170 palms found on the island, the gigantic sixty-foot palm lives a lonely life of about 30-50 years and works itself to death by producing a spectacular show of flowers and fruit, going out in a colorful blaze before drying up, dying and collapsing. What accounts for this is the flowering process itself. When it flowers, the stem tip grows a giant inflorscence that bursts into branches of hundreds of small flowers like these on the left.Each of these then can be pollinated and develop fruit, soon producing a nectar that turns this behemoth into one of the more popular gathering spots among local birds and insects. As a final act, this taxing performance results in a massive drain on the palms nutrient reserve and after several months of depleting itself it can no longer survive. Perhaps if I was more of a coffee drinker, particularly of the caffeine free variety, I would be more enthusiastic about scientists also coming across the first ever caffeine-free coffee plant, producing all-natural beans devoid of caffeine. But I'm not, and so the Tahina Palm's story, its already scarce population of 100 or so and its own self-destruction, wins me over.