Source: Qianjiang Evening News
Hundred Mountains Ancestral Horned Toad
Tai incidentally flat wax cicada
Yesterday, Zhejiang held a provincial communiqué on the status of the ecological environment and a press conference on the conservation of biodiversity. At the press conference, it was revealed that in recent years, two new species have been found in Zhejiang - the Taishun flat wax cicada and the Baishan ancestral horned toad.
Zhejiang is a province rich in biodiversity, with forest coverage at the forefront of the country, and offshore and coastal wetlands are important habitats and transit stations for bird migration. There are 790 species of terrestrial wild vertebrates in the province, accounting for about 30% of the total number of the country; there are about 5500 species of higher plants, which occupy an important position in the flora of southeast China. Our province takes the background survey of biodiversity in 29 key areas as the starting point, and a number of new species and new records are constantly being discovered. The first phase of the background survey will be completed by the end of 2021.
Last year, 1 new amphibian global species (Baishan Zu horned toad) was newly discovered in our province, 263 new species were recorded in Zhejiang, and the Thai-shun flat wax cicada was also found. Recently, the team of Dr. Song Zhishun of the Institute of Insect Resources and Diversity of Jiangsu Second Normal University, together with Dr. Wang Rongrong of the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Ma Fangzhou of the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, officially published a new species of insect in the family Flat Wax Cicada in China in the international journal of animal taxonomy "ZooKeys": Taishun flat wax cicada.
Looking at the whole province, in recent years, the Zhejiang Wildlife Survey has found 3 new species and 98 new records of Lishui tree frog, Lishui heterogeneous toad and Beilun Ji frog; the survey of wild plants has found 81 new species such as Jingning Qinggang, Fengyang Mountain Pod, Zhejiang Southern Wood Rhinoceros, Xianxialing Euphorbia, and 112 new records of geographical distribution at or above the provincial level.
In the background survey of biodiversity in key areas that began in 2019, a total of 2 new species were found in the province, and 65 species were newly recorded in China (64 species of macromygi and 1 species of sedge family). Species such as eurasian otters, honeysuckle, Chinese partridges, kuáng, and white-capped terns that have disappeared in the province for decades have been rediscovered. The national second-level protected insect Yangcai Arm Golden Turtle was declared extinct in 1982 and was rediscovered in Baishanzu National Park in this survey. In 2021, the survey of Cixi City, Ningbo Province, found that the national second-level key protected wild plant - the scale hammer tree, is also a new record in our province.
Reporter Sun Yan correspondent Shao Tian