Two marine species made the Arizona State University’s annual “Top 10″ list of lifeforms discovered or identified during the past year.  The “ornate sleeper ray,” Electrolux addisoni, a new genus and species, is the largest known member of the electric ray family Narkidae.  A new species of the dangerous box jellyfish genus Malo, Malo kingi, was named after an American tourist, Robert King, who apparently died after being stung by the species while swimming off northern Queensland, Australia.

The Top 10 list is part of the annual State of Observed Species (SOS) Report, issued by ASU in partnership with the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the International Plant Names Index, and Thompson Scientific.  ASU describes the SOS as a “report card on the status of our knowledge of earth’s species, summarizing the number of species newly described in the most recent year for which complete data are available.”  The SOS 2008 (PDF Format) was released on 23 May 2008 and reports on the discovery of 16,969 new species.

Copyright © 2008 Thomas M. Tripp