A tree-dwelling carnivore from the cloud forests of South America heads this year’s top 10 list and shows that not all of the “big” species are already known or documented.

Picture courtesy: Mark Gurney / CC BY 3.0

Chosen from the 18,000 new species discovered in the last year, the Olinguito, or bassaricyon neblina, is the first new carnivorous mammal described in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years.

A smaller cousin of the racoon, it weighs in at around 4.5 pounds. Living in the Andes in Colombia and Ecuador, means deforestation of the cloud forest is a threat to the survival of this secretive animal.

The International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) releases its top ten animals around 23 May each year, to mark the birthday of the 18th century Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus, whose work founded the modern system of naming and classifying plants and animals.

Picture courtesy: Paul Wilkin

“It’s hard to believe the dragon tree went unnoticed this long” say the scientists from the IISE.

Kaweesak’s Dragon Tree: Mother of Dragons, stands nearly 40 feet tall, and is found in the limestone mountains of the Leoi and Lop Buri provinces of Thailand, and also nearby Burma. It has beautiful, soft, sword-shaped leaves and cream-coloured flowers with bright orange filaments.

There may be as few as 2,500 of these beautiful specimens in the world, and sadly their location is also a threat to their survival: the limestone it grows on is extracted to produce concrete.

Picture courtesy: SCINI/Marymegan Daly

It may only be two and a half centimetres long, but the ANDRILL Anemone raises some big questions.

Discovered by the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program under a glacier on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, it is the first species of sea anemone reported to live in ice.

Scientists are not sure how it survives in such harsh conditions. The anemone burrows into the ice shelf, leaving its tentacles dangling in the freezing water below.

Photo courtesy: Servicio de Informacion y Noticias CientÌficas (SINC) and JM Guerra-García

But the 2.5cm anemone is a giant compared to this tiny skeleton shrimp, Liropus Minisculus. At 3.3mm long it is the smallest of its genus.

The crustacean was identified from specimens collected in a cave on Santa Catalina, off the coast of southern California and is the first of its genus to be reported in the northeastern Pacific.

The name Skeleton Shrimp comes from its translucence – giving it a bony appearance.

Photo courtesy: Cobus M. Visagie

Bridges, museums and roads are regularly named after famous monarchs – but the Dutch royal family, and specifically His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange, have been given the dubious honour of having this new species of fungus named after them.

Orange Penicillium, or penicillium vanoranjei, was isolated from soil in Tunisia and was reported in a journal published by the National Herbarium of the Netherlands.

The fungus is distinguished by its bright orange colour when produced in colonies (a happy coincidence, no doubt), and scientists have also noted that it produces a “sheet-like extra-cellular matrix” which may function as protection in a drought.

Photo courtesy: Conrad Hoskin

The Cape Melville leaf-tailed gecko (Saltuarius eximius), however, does not go in for bright colours. The newly discovered gecko was found in Australia and has mottled colouration and a wide tail which are used for camouflage.

The gecko is native to rain forests and rocky habitats and operates at night – it waits on vertical rock surfaces and trees before pouncing on its prey.

It was found on rocky terrain in isolated rain forests of the Melville Range of eastern Australia – and scientists said surveys of similar terrains did not find any additional populations, meanign this gecko could be quite rare.

Photo courtesy: Manuel Maldonado

The one-celled Amoeboid Protist is four to five centimetres high – making it a giant in the world of single cell organisms.

This foram (part of a distinct group among the many amoeboids) from the Mediterranean Sea gathers sponge fragments from its surroundings and uses them like “many Lego blocks” to construct a shell.

It ends up looking much like a carnivorous sponge as well as feeding like one, extending pseudopods (a protist’s version of arms) outside the shell to feed on invertebrates that have become trapped in the spiny structures.

This species was discovered in underwater caves 30 miles off the southeast coast of Spain – the same caves where carnivorous sponges were first discovered.

Photo courtesy: Leibniz-Institute DSMZ and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

These microbes have been discovered in two different “clean rooms” – 2,500 miles apart – where spacecraft are assembled.

Though these clean rooms are frequently sterilised to get rid of microbes, some resistant species – such as this newly discovered one – can tolerate extreme dryness; wide ranges of pH, temperature and salt concentration; and exposure to UV light or hydrogen peroxide.

The microbial species, Tersicoccus phoenicis, is a nuisance as it could potentially contaminate other planets that the spacecraft visit.

Photo credit: Jennifer Read

The tiny size and delicately fringed wings of the parasitoid wasp family Mymaridae led to their common name: fairyflies.

Tinkerbella nana, named for Peter Pan’s fairy sidekick, measures just 250 micrometres and is among the smallest insects. It is the latest addition to the 1,400 or so known species of the family.

But don’t let the sweet name fool you. It is presumed that the species, which probably has a life span of a few days, attacks the eggs of other insects.

The new species was collected by sweeping vegetation in secondary growth forest at LaSelva Biological Station in Costa Rica.

Photo courtesy: Jana Bedek

The domed land snail, Zospeum Tholussum, has no eyes and no shell puigmentation. The reason? It lives in complete darkness 900-plus metres underground, in the Jama-Trojama caves of western Croatia.

Only one living specimen was collected in a large cavern among rocks and sand with a small stream of running water nearby, however many shells were also found in the area.

Even by snail standards, Zospeum tholossum moves slowly, creeping only a few millimeters or centimetres a week. Researchers suspect these small snails, measuring only 2mm in length, travel in water currents or hitchhike on other cave animals, such as bats or crickets, to travel longer distances.