Scientists say they're intrigued by two new species of woodlizards found in the Peruvian jungle, and not just because of their scary-cool looks.

The lizards, described in the open-access journal Zookeys, were found in Cordillera Azul National Park, which was created to protect Peru's largest mountain rainforest. The area includes some of the country's least-explored forests.

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The males of both species sport distinctive patterns of green spots on a brown and black background. One species, Enyalioides azulae, is known only from a single locality in the mountain rainforest of northeastern Peru's Rio Huallaga basin. The other, E. binzayedi, lives in the same river basin. "Azulae" refers to Cordillera Azul National Park, while "binzayedi" pays tribute to the sponsor of the discoverers' field survey, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the creator of a conservation fund bearing his name.

These two species take their place alongside 10 others in the genus Enyalioides. Three of those 10 were discovered just in the past five years, and the researchers say that suggests that "more species might be awaiting discovery in other unexplored areas close to the Andes."

"Thanks to these discoveries, Peru becomes the country holding the greatest diversity of woodlizards," lead author Pablo Venegas of Peru's Center for Ornithology and Biodiversity, or CORBIDI, said in a news release from Pensoft Publishers. "Cordillera Azul National Park is a genuine treasure for Peru, and it must be treated as a precious future source of biodiversity exploration and preservation!"

The two species apparently share the same territory, with only a slight difference in altitude ranges. That's what's intriguing: The researchers say the lizards' differences, as reflected in their mitochondrial DNA as well as body characteristics, may reflect the subtle effects of evolutionary divergence.

More species worth marveling at: 

• Borneo bio-hunt turns up treasures
• Strange species found in Suriname
• Taking stock of 2011's new species 
• New bee or not new bee? That is the question
• 'Lost' rainbow toad rediscovered
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• The Amazon's amazing species
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• More strange species from Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground

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For more about the Peruvian woodlizards, check out Nadia Drake's report for Wired.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

If scientists can use genetic engineering to bring back the woolly mammoth, should they do it? How about the passenger pigeon? Or the western black rhino? Do we humans have a responsibility to restore at least some of the species that our ancestors wiped out? And if we bring them back, will they really be the same?

Such questions are the focus of TEDxDeExtinction, a public forum that's being presented on Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET at National Geographic's Washington headquarters. You can watch the whole thing online via LivestreamTEDx and National Geographic's De-Extinction website, which also has loads of articles and resources on the issue. The event has been organized by Revive & Restore, a nonprofit clearinghouse for worldwide de-extinction work that's under the aegis of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco.

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"De-extinction"? What's that?

"It's using new technologies like cloning and genome sequencing to reconstruct a species that went extinct," science writer Carl Zimmer explained. Zimmer's talk at Friday's TEDx event will help set the scene for the de-extinction debate, and he's also written a cover story on the topic for National Geographic's April issue.

De-extinction has been in the works for more than a decade, basically ever since Dolly the Sheep demonstrated in 1996 that mammals could be cloned from cells in a lab dish. Spanish and French scientists worked for years on an effort to bring the Pyrenean ibex back from extinction, by cloning cells that had been preserved from the last known animal of the species. They succeeded only in producing a deformed kid that died 10 minutes after birth.

That brief de-extinction (and re-extinction) took place in 2003 and was reported in 2009. Since then, significant advances have been made in cloning and in other technologies for DNA sequencing and gene splicing. That's allowed scientists to think about what previously was unthinkable. Russian and Korean researchers, for example, are looking through the tissue of a woolly mammoth that was preserved in the deep freeze of Siberia's permafrost, in hopes of finding cells that are suitable for cloning.

Harvard geneticist George Church, meanwhile, is working on a technique for inserting snippets of reconstructed DNA code from an extinct species into stem cells for a closely related living species. The coding for the traits of a passenger pigeon could be reintroduced, bit by bit, into a breed of common rock pigeon. Over the course of many generations, the rock pigeons would become more and more like passenger pigeons.

"George Church's method will open up a whole new range of possibilities," Zimmer said. "You're not actually grabbing an intact molecule that was inside an animal that was alive 1,000 years ago."

This type of reverse engineering could also open up a whole new range of questions. "Is a regular rock pigeon that's been given the traits that passenger pigeons had really a passenger pigeon, or is it a hybrid, or whatever?" Zimmer asked.

In a similar vein, plant researchers are sorting through the genome of Asian chestnut trees, with the intention of picking out the specific strings of DNA coding that can make American chestnuts more resistant to a species-killing fungus. The trick could save American chestnut trees from extinction, even though it's debatable whether they'd still be American chestnuts. "It's not the original thing, it's better," Zimmer said. "But should be we be doing that?"

It's not such a giant leap to think about looking through the Neanderthal genome as well, to find out whether it contains the coding for traits that could make humans "better." Church's reflections on that subject sparked all sorts of exaggerated reports a couple of months ago, replete with references to Neanderthal babies being spawned by human surrogate mothers-for-hire.

Zimmer said the last thing that Church and his colleagues want is a genetic free-for-all over de-extinction. "They want this to be something where there's a strong consensus," he said. "This is not an off-the-reservation project."

Friday's event could represent a significant step toward building that consensus. Watch the webcast and see for yourself. National Geographic's webcast portal includes the day's schedule.

Photographer Joel Sartore, one of the scheduled speakers at TEDxDeExtinction, has been documenting species on the brink of extinction for his Photo Ark project. Here are three of the species he has included in his portfolio. For more about Sartore, check out this Daily Nightly blog posting:

More about the genetic frontier:

• How synthetic biology will change us
• Potentially endless line of mice cloned
• Extinct tiger gene resurrected in a mouse

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The de-extinction issue is due to be addressed in a one-hour National Geographic Channel special, "Mammoth: Back From the Dead," premiering April 12. Also, the Wildlife Conservation Society is planning a conference April 9-11 in Cambridge, England, on the implications of synthetic biology for conservation.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A Dutch-Malaysian expedition to the remote "Heart of Borneo" have turned up more than 160 species previously unknown to science — and perhaps more importantly, enough DNA samples to figure out how more than 1,400 species in one of the world's hottest hot spots for biodiversity are related.

"It has been a successful expedition," the project's leader, Menno Schilthuizen of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, said in a news release from the center, based in the Dutch city of Leiden. Forty researchers from Naturalis and from Sabah Parks, a Malaysian conservation group, journeyed to Borneo's Mount Kinabalu last month to survey the area.

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Scientists collected 3,500 DNA samples during the two-week expedition. Back in the lab, Naturalis' biologists will analyze the genetic code to generate family trees for all the collected plants, fungi and animals. A close look at the relationships among the novel species found on Kinabalu, compared with the wider spectrum of species throughout Borneo, could tell researchers whether Kinabalu's species evolved long ago or only recently.

"It's the first time that such an extensive expedition will go to Borneo with evolution as their main focus," Schilthuizen said. "We are following in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace, who formulated a first version of the theory of evolution on Borneo."

Naturalis said spiders and fungi accounted for the largest numbers of new species found on Kinabalu. Other new species included true bugs, beetles, snails, stalk-eyed flies, damselflies, ferns, termites and possibly a frog.

The expedition came across an "El Dorado" for fungi, said József Geml, one of the researchers. "While the plant and animal life of this mountain has been the focus of numerous research projects, Kinabalu has remained terra incognita for scientific studies on fungi," Geml said. "It is difficult not to feel overwhelmed by this task. One of the manifestations of this diversity comes in the endless variety of shapes and colors that sometimes are truly breathtaking."

The researchers expect that the DNA studies will result in a scientific publication about evolution in the Heart of Borneo within a year. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these snapshots from the hot spot:

More about species:

• Strange species found in Suriname
• Taking stock of 2011's new species 
• New bee or not new bee? That is the question
• 'Lost' rainbow toad rediscovered
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• The Amazon's amazing species
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• More strange species from Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking

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Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The late Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley is the latest celebrity to be honored with a scientific species name. It's not the most glamorous species — in fact, it's a blood-feeding fish parasite — but there's no question that Gnathia marleyi knows how to "stir it up" in Caribbean coral reefs.

It's the Caribbean connection that prompted the name, which is listed along with a description of the species in the June 6 issue of the journal Zootaxa.

"I named this species, which is truly a natural wonder, after Marley because of my respect and admiration for Marley's music," Paul Sikkel, a marine biologist at Arkansas State University, said in a news release from the National Science Foundation. "Plus, this species is as uniquely Caribbean as was Marley."

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G. marleyi is a type of gnathiid isopod, a small crustacean that hides in corners of eastern Caribbean coral reefs. When the right kinds of fish come by, the juveniles jump out and attach themselves to suck their blood. But when they grow into adults, they stop feeding. "We believe that adults subsist for two to three weeks on the last feedings they had as juveniles and then die, hopefully after they have reproduced," Sikkel said.

Sikkel and his colleagues found specimens of the tiny isopods about 10 years ago in the U.S. Virgin Islands. They're so common there that Sikkel assumed that the species had already been described — but after he sent a specimen to another member of his research team, Nico J. Smit of South Africa's North-West University, he received word that the critter hadn't been written up in the literature.

Researchers went through the laborious process of raising the juvenile isopods up to adulthood so they could be properly described. Specimens of G. marleyi will be housed indefinitely at the American Museum of Natural History in New York for reference.

The reason why Sikkel and his colleagues have been spending so time with Caribbean coral-reef parasites is because they suspect that such species may serve as an indicator of coral-reef health. Coral degradation may create habitats more conducive for parasites to attack their fishy hosts. Those parasites, in turn, may transmit blood-borne diseases and accelerate the decline of fish communities.

That's not to say that G. marleyi is all bad: Sikkel points out that they are "the most important food item for cleaner fishes, and thus key to understanding marine cleaning symbioses." (It's worth noting that other breeds of isopods can grow to horror-movie dimensions.)

Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981, at the age of 36, and it's an open question whether he would have welcomed having a parasite named in his honor. As cartoonist Gary Larson said after a species of louse was named Strigiphilus garylarsoni, "You have to grab these opportunities when they come along." But even if Marley fans are not also fans of gnathiid isopods, they can take heart in the fact that Marley has other critters named after him — such as the "Bob Marley sponge" (Pipestela candelabra), which is found in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

More about celebrity species names:

• The Hoff just loves his crabs
• What's in a scientific name? (Scroll down)
• One way to get a species named after you
• Rename Homo sapiens? The idea seems unwise

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Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Surveying the biodiversity of the world's last wild areas is often a depressing business, due to the effects of deforestation and development, but in a roadless region of the South American country of Suriname, scientists have come upon a good-news story.

"We can say for sure that this is still a pristine area, in contrast to most of the places that we visit," Trond Larsen, director of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program, told me today.

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Part of the payoff for Conservation International comes in the form of scientific discovery. Today, the nonprofit group is reporting the identification of 46 potentially new species, observed during a three-week expedition to southwest Suriname in 2010. The list includes a fancifully named "cowboy frog," a strangely spiked species of armored catfish, and colorful breeds of beetles and katydids. Check out our slideshow to get a close look at a few of the newly identified critters.

As far as Larsen is concerned, it's just as important to document the nearly 1,300 previously known species that were observed during the survey. After all, the main purpose of the Rapid Assessment Program is not just to add names to a list, but to lay down a baseline for assessing the health of an entire ecosystem.

"It's a quick and dirty way to go into an area ... and say something meaningful about the importance of that place," Larsen said.

Thanks to the RAP survey, Larsen and his colleagues know that the remote area along Suriname's Kutari and Sipaliwini Rivers is an important place. "It's one of the last really vast areas of unroaded tropical wilderness," he said.

Conservation International's survey was conducted by 53 scientists in collaboration with students and the region's indigenous Trio people.

Leeanne Alonso, a former director of the RAP program who is now with Global Wildlife Conservation, said the scientists were impressed by "the amazing diversity of birds and mammals of the region."

"You can really get up close to wildlife here," she said in a news release. "A camera trap recorded a jaguar about one hundred yards from our camp." The cameras captured nighttime glimpses of a giant armadillo, a peccary and an ocelot as well.

The scientists also observed cave petroglyphs near the Trio village of Kwamalasamutu, at a site that Conservation International is helping local communities preserve as an ecotourism destination. The site, known as Werehpai, is the oldest known human settlement  found in southern Suriname: Radiocarbon dating and archaeological studies suggest that the first signs of habitation go back at least 5,000 years.

"The Kwamalasamutu area's pristine nature and cultural heritage make it a unique destination for more adventurous tourists, who enjoy trekking through the dense rainforest to discover flora and fauna," said Tjon Sie Fat, executive director of Conservation International's operation in Suriname. "CI-Suriname and the Trio are hoping to further develop a niche market ecotourism site here."

The region's newfound species add to the strangeness of the setting. Among the finds reported in the RAP Bulletin of Biological Assessment series are these:

• Cowboy frog: This potentially new species of frog (Hypsiboas sp.) was discovered during a night survey in a swampy area of the Koetari River. It has white fringes along its legs and a spur on each heel — which inspired the amphibian's nickname.
• Armored catfish with spines: There are numerous species of catfish that are "armored" with external bony plates, but this one (Pseudacanthicus sp.) is unique because of the spines covering its plates of armor. Larsen noted that the fish live in a river that is infested with giant piranha fish. "Presumably, the spines are adapted to protect against the piranha," he said.
• Crayola katydid: The Suriname species (Vestria sp.) is one of only a few types of insects that are named after the popular brand of crayons, because of their striking coloration. The "Crayola" critters are the only katydids known to employ chemical defenses to repel bird and mammalian predators.

Such species will take their place alongside other strangely named critters found in that region of Suriname, including the Pac-Man frog and the conehead katydid. And there may be more to come: Conservation International is planning to send another RAP expedition to southern Suriname in March.

More about species:

• Taking stock of 2011's new species 
• New bee or not new bee? That is the question
• 'Lost' rainbow toad rediscovered
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• The Amazon's amazing species
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• More strange species from Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking

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Don't miss our slideshow featuring the strange species of Suriname.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

When word got around that scientists nicknamed a particularly hairy-chested kind of deep-sea crab after "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff, "The Hoff" didn't get huffy. Instead, he proudly tweeted the news to his 358,000 Twitter followers. The Southern Ocean's "Hoff crabs" are just the latest critters to get celebrity nicknames.

The saga of Hasselhoff's crabs came out this week when researchers reported the discovery of a "lost world" in waters off the Antarctic coast in the journal PLoS Biology. Piles of white yeti crabs were found clumped around hydrothermal vents at the ocean's bottom, in an area known as the East Scotia Ridge.

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Expedition leader Alex Rogers, a zoologist at Oxford University, said the crabs were notable because they had long hairs, or setae, covering their smooth undersides. "Their nickname on the cruise ship was the 'Hasselhoff crab,' which gives you some idea of what they look like," Rogers told the BBC.

Rogers was clearly referring to the hairy-chested look that Hasselhoff sported when he portrayed a beefcake lifeguard on the '90s TV series "Baywatch." Hasselhoff, now 59, has had his ups and downs in recent years, but he saw the story of the Hoff crabs as one of the ups. "Check this out!" he said in a Twitter tweet pointing to the BBC story and bearing the hashtag "Got Hoff Crabs." He even urged one of his followers to retweet the news.

Rogers and his colleagues still have to decide what the crabs' scientific Latin-derived species name will be. The crabs are part of the genus Kiwa, along with other types of yeti crabs, so Kiwa hasselhoffi is a possibility; however, Hasselhoff would be well-advised not to get his hopes up just yet.

"There are no plans to formally name the crab after David, but I am yet to discuss this with my colleagues," Rogers told me today in an email. "The species is distinct from Kiwa hirsuta and Kiwa puravida, and we are describing it at present. An alternative name that was being batted around was the wookie crab — again for obvious reasons. The Hoff stuck...."

I'm not aware that any species has so far been formally named after the Hoff — or after Wookiees, for that matter. But there have been plenty of celebrities honored with scientific species names, including an ant and a spider named after the guy who played Han Solo (Pheidole harrisonfordi and Calponia harrisonfordi, respectively), a beetle that looks as if it has Arnold Schwarzenegger's bulging biceps (Agra schwarzeneggeri), a bunny named after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri), a lichen named after President Barack Obama (Caloplaca obamae), and a beetle and spider named after talk-show comedian Stephen Colbert (Agaporomorphus colberti and Aptostichus stephencolberti).

Asteroids and other celestial bodies can provide celebrities with additional pieces of scientific immortality. There's no Asteroid Hasselhoff yet, but the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center lists Spielberg, Lancearmstrong, Tomhanks, Megryan and more. When astronomers found a world on the solar system's rim that was bigger than Pluto, they gave it the nickname Xena, in honor of the TV warrior princess. (It was later named after Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and strife.)

Whether or not those Southern Ocean crabs get the scientific name "Kiwa hasselhoffi," they'll probably end up being known informally as Hoff crabs from now on. But it's a delicate environment down there, so I wouldn't advise any celebrity junkets to the hydrothermal vents.

Come to think of it, that should be set down as one of the ironclad rules on the East Scotia Ridge: Don't hassle the Hoff crabs.

More about yeti crabs:

• Top 10 oddballs of the animal world
• Hairy-chested crabs found in deep-sea vents
• Divers discover new kind of crustacean

More about scientific names: 

• What's in a scientific name? (Scroll down)
• One way to get a species named after you
• Rename Homo sapiens? The idea seems unwise

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Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

 A rare species of fish described as “faceless and brainless” was among the unusual finds made by marine scientists off Britain’s coast, according to a Scottish government report published on Thursday.

The prehistoric amphioxus species, which grows to about two inches long and has no fins, was recorded off Orkney, part of the Northern Isles that lie off the far northern coast of mainland Scotland.

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The elusive fish is regarded as a modern representative of the first animals that evolved a backbone, the Scottish government said.

With a nerve cord down its back, it has no specific brain or face. According to The Scotsman newspaper, it has a translucent, fish-like body but has no true skeleton.

It is usually found buried in sand in shallow parts of temperate or tropical seas, the newspaper said. In Asia, the species is harvested commercially to use as food for pets.

Other rare finds from the marine surveys, which covered over 2,000 square miles, included giant mussels with shells measuring up to 18 inches and new communities of Northern Feather Star, a brightly colored species with 10 feather-like arms fanning out from a central disc, which were revealed off the Sound of Canna, near Skye.

The Scottish Government said the findings will further the country's knowledge of the biodiversity of its seas.

Scottish Natural Heritage and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University were among organizations that carried out the work.

Underwater video was shot and acoustic and 3D images were used in the surveys.

Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy with environmental campaign group WWF Scotland, added: “These surveys highlight that Scotland’s seas and coasts are home to a truly amazing range of weird and wonderful wildlife.

“By providing vital information on what lies beneath the waves, these surveys will help inform decisions on better ways to protect this important resource.”

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Scientists are tallying up scores, or even hundreds, of newfound species — but they're also musing on how many species will be lost before they're found.

This year's count from the California Academy of Sciences demonstrates that the pace of discovery is, if anything, increasing: Researchers associated with the academy added 140 species to the big biological list, and a 42-day expedition to the Philippines could eventually add hundreds more.

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Among the highlights are four new species of deep-sea sharks, six completely new genera of African goblin spiders, three new genera of barnacles and 31 new sea-slug species. This year's tally of 140 compares favorably with the count of 110 species that were added during 2010.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Academy's gallery of the latest finds:

The folks at the California Academy of Sciences aren't the only ones taking stock of new species. Earlier this week, the WWF conservation group noted that 208 newly described species, including a "psychedelic gecko," were recorded in Southeast Asia's Mekong River region during 2010. Australian researchers say they've found more than 1,000 new species in the country's Outback, and they estimate another 3,500 are waiting to be discovered beneath the arid topsoil. They say thousands more species of small animals are probably still undiscovered in Africa and South America.

"If you start multiplying this on a global basis, there's likely to be massive diversity that will be uncovered in coming decades," Andy Austin, a biologist at the Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity at the University of Adelaide, is quoted as saying.

But if all that biodiversity is just waiting to be discovered, why do we hear all this talk about a modern extinction crisis? It's because hundreds or thousands of other species are passing into oblivion every year. That was the point behind the WWF's survey of the Mekong Delta.

"While the 2010 discoveries are new to science, many are already destined for the dinner table, struggling to survive in shrinking habitats and at risk of extinction," Stuart Chapman, conservation director of WWF Greater Mekong, said in a news release. Vietnam's Javan rhino population is among the latest to bite the dust.

Another just-released study puts the issue in terms that a 6-year-old could understand: One out of every six species related to the characters in the movie "Finding Nemo" is facing extinction, according to researchers at Simon Fraser University and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Among the most threatened are the real-life kin of Squirt and Crush the marine turtles, Anchor the hammer head shark and Sheldon the seahorse.

"It's unthinkable that the characters in 'Finding Nemo' could become extinct, but this is the reality unless we pay more attention to the diversity of marine life," SFU's Loren McClenachan, the study's lead author, said in a news release. The report is due to be published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Are all these concerns leading you to lose your appetite for shark-fin soup and rhino-horn concoctions? Feel free to weigh in below with your comments on the campaign to find species and keep them from being lost.

More species lost and found:

• New bee or not new bee? That is the question
• 'Lost' rainbow toad rediscovered
• Froggy finds raise hopes for Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• The Amazon's amazing species
• Biological gems found in Philippines
• Madagascar offers hundreds of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2010
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under ... underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

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One researcher has identified 11 new species of sweat bees, including a bug named in honor of Gotham City — but in a sense, these bees aren't new at all. They've probably been right under our noses all this time.

The new identifications were made by Cornell entomologist Jason Gibbs by checking dead-bee collections and conducting DNA tests. Species names and descriptions were published last month in the journal Zootaxa as part of a reshuffling of the family tree for 97 species of sweat bees. Gibbs said there may be thousands of bee species yet to be identified.

"This highlights the need for additional studies of our major pollinators," and not just honeybees, he told me.

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One bee may look like another, but there can be subtle morphological and genetic differences that set them apart. If the bees are so dissimilar that they can't breed with each other, they're considered separate species. Mitochondrial DNA tests provide a reliable way to map out species relationships by revealing how long ago particular strains of creatures diverged. "These bees are morphologically and genetically distinct enough that you can say with confidence that they are their own species," Gibbs explained in a Cornell Chronicle interview.

Sweat bees are so named because they get some of their sustenance from licking the sweat off our skin. They nest in the ground or in tree cavities. Four of the species that Gibbs identified are "cuckoo bees," which have lost the ability to build their own nests and collect pollen. These species lay their eggs in the nests of other bees, which end up raising the invaders' progeny. That's the same sort of trick cuckoos pull in the bird world. (Gibbs named one of the cuckoo-bee species Lasioglossum izawsum, which is awesome.)

Four of the species were found in the New York City area, including a specimen that was collected at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 2009. That species was named Lasioglossum gotham, which led The New York Times to declare that the Big Apple "has a bee to call its own." Sure, Gotham may be one of New York's nicknames, but if you want to think of L. gotham as the "Batman bee" instead, no one's going to stop you.

The species names for the nine other newly identified strains are arantium, ascheri, batya, curculum, furunculum, georgeickworti, katherineae, rozeni and trigeminum. Some of these labels echo the names of other bee researchers: Cornell's George Eickwort, for example, or John Ascher and Jerome Rozen of the American Museum of Natural History. It was Ascher who found L. gotham and passed it along to Gibbs for identification. The Times reported that L. katherineae was identified by analyzing a dead bee that had been sitting in a drawer at the museum since 1903.

The fact that the list of bee species is a little longer than it used to be doesn't mean that the widely publicized crisis besetting the bees is over. Honeybees have been hard-hit by a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, which experts suspect is caused by a combination of mites, parasites, viruses and pesticides. Bumblebees are having problems, too.

"This discovery doesn't counter the idea that bees are declining," Gibbs told me. "What it points out is that there are a lot of species we don't enough about to say whether they're at a stable level."

Identifying the wide variety of bee species just might be the first step toward identifying the factors that keep some populations healthy while others are put at risk. "Even though these bees were only recently described, we can go back to the collections by digitizing records, and start comparing modern abundances," Gibbs said.

More about the bees:

• Big mystery surrounds bees' tiny foe
• New bee viruses found attacking healty hives
• Bees feel the sting of huge population plunge
• Four bumblebee species declining in North America

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Gibbs' research was supported by the Canadian Barcode of Life Network through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Genome Canada, and the National Science Foundation. Gibbs was a researcher at York University in Toronto for a time while working on the study, which explains the Canadian connection.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Researchers say they identified 300 species that they think are new to science this spring during a biological prospecting expedition to the Philippines, organized by the California Academy of Sciences.

“The Philippines is one of the hottest of the hotspots for diverse and threatened life on Earth,” Terrence Gosliner, dean of science and research collections at the California Academy of Sciences and leader of the 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition, said today in a news release about the findings. “Despite this designation, however, the biodiversity here is still relatively unknown, and we found new species during nearly every dive and hike as we surveyed the country’s reefs, rainforests, and the ocean floor."

The 42-day expedition was launched in late April and focused on Luzon, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago, as well as the surrounding waters. In cooperation with more than two dozen colleagues from the Philippines, the academy's scientists surveyed a wide range of ecosystems and shared their findings with local communities and conservationists.

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Among the suspected new species are dozens of types of insects and spiders, deep-sea corals, sea pens, sea urchins and more than 50 kinds of sea slugs. Scientists say they came across a new kind of cicada that makes a distinctive "laughing" call, a starfish that eats only sunken driftwood, and a deep-sea swell shark that sucks water into its stomach to bulk up and scare off predators.

When the expedition ended, the scientists combined their data and identified their top conservation priorities — expansion of marine protected areas, plus reforestation to reduce sedimentation damage to coral reefs. The academy said reduction of plastic waste was also a priority, because plastic litter was pervasive throughout the marine environment, even on the ocean floor at depths of more than 6,000 feet.

Over the coming months, the expedition's scientists will be analyzing their specimens with the aid of microscopes and DNA sequencing equipment to confirm their discoveries.

The academy's expedition is one of many efforts around the globe to document and safeguard biodiversity — in part because yet-to-be-discovered species may point the way to commercially useful drugs or technologies, in part because they may turn out to be key to an ecosystem's health, and in part because they're beautiful, exotic or just plain odd.

"The species lists and distribution maps that we created during this expedition will help to inform future conservation decisions and ensure that this remarkable biodiversity is afforded the best possible chance of survival," Gosliner said.

Be sure to check out our slideshow featuring the 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition, and then click through these other galleries of new species:

• Madagascar offers treasure trove of new species
• Scientists spot biological beauties in Bali
• RAP stars rock the animal world
• Lost frogs found in Haiti
• Three new frogs leap into spotlight
• Amphibians wanted ... alive
• New species from New Guinea
• Scientists finish first sea census
• Deep-sea creatures of the Coral Sea
• The top 10 new species from 2009
• Beautiful biodiversity in Brazil
• New Guinea's 'Lost World' revisited
• Indonesia's 'Garden of Eden'
• Papua New Guinea's new species
• Marine marvels from Papua New Guinea
• Biological treasures from Borneo
• Celebrities of the Celebes Sea
• 12 froggy finds from India
• Fantastic frogs from Colombia
• Aliens lurk in Antarctic depths
• The strange species of Suriname
• Vulnerable new species in Brazil
• Discoveries from Vietnam's 'Green Corridor'
• Endangered species of the Mekong Delta
• New species from Australia's coral reefs
• Thousands of new species in ocean's depths
• Hundreds of new species amid the Himalayas
• New species found Down Under .. underground
• Eight 'extinct' species found alive and kicking  

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The 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition was funded by a gift from Margaret and Will Hearst. The academy has planned an "Expedition NightLife" celebration at its San Francisco headquarters at 6 p.m. PT June 30, featuring a display of specimens from the expedition and Filipino music and dance. For more information about the schedule and tickets, check the academy's website. Can't make it to San Francisco? You can still click through the academy's YouTube video playlist for the expedition.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

A captive male Darwin's frog coughed up ten babies Thursday at a zoo in Santiago, Chile, a milestone in a project to save the amphibians from extinction.

The vulnerable species is one of two members of the only genus on Earth that rears its young inside of its vocal sac, a job taken on by the males. 

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"They have a small opening below their tongue. … After [the eggs] hatch, he takes the tadpoles into his mouth and manipulates them through that opening and into his vocal sac," Danté Fenolio, a conservation scientist with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, explained to me today. 

"For about 60 days, they go all the way through to development inside his vocal sac. At that point when they are ready, fully developed, he coughs up fully formed miniatures of the adult."

Fenolio is working on a captive breeding project with the National Zoo and Universidad Catolica in Santiago to build a so-called assurance population of the frogs that can be released into the wild once, or if, environmental threats to their natural habitat are thwarted.

The babies coughed up Thursday are the second batch produced by the frogs, a sign that the project is meeting success. 

Froggy threats
The frogs are native to the southern temperate forests of Chile and Argentina, which have been isolated from the rest of the world since the dinosaur age due to a surrounding geography of mountains, desert and ocean. 

This region receives enough rainfall to classify as a rainforest, which makes it ideal for amphibians. But it's also ideal for vineyards and plantations of radiata pine, a fast-growing tree highly valued for the country's lumber and pulp and paper industries. 

"Those two things have driven a lot of these southern Chilean amphibians close to extinction," Fenolio said.

In addition, the chyrtrid fungus, which has devastated amphibian populations around the world, recently arrived to southern Chile and could easily wipe out populations there as it has elsewhere.

Yet another threat to some species of frogs in the region are invasive trout introduced to rivers and streams to support Chile's rising status as a world-class fly fishing destination. The trout eat tadpoles, though not those of the Darwin's frogs since they are safely inside dad's vocal sac. 

Assurance colonies
"It is a very complicated conservation landscape," said Fenolio, who hopes to secure funding to establish captive breeding populations for Chile's other endangered amphibians and build up assurance colonies.

"An assurance colony doesn't fix the problem in the wild. What you are trying to do is buy yourself some time," he explained.

While addressing some of the threats could be a decades-long process with tough battles against well-established industries, others are relatively simple and straightforward, albeit costly.

For example, populations of some amphibians such as the false mountain toad could be protected by eliminating invasive trout from a stream and putting in fish exclusion devices downstream from them.

"That's been done in before in various areas around the world and it would be a relatively simple effort," Fenolio said.

One more threat, though, looms on the horizon. The Chilean government recently approved the construction of a series of hydroelectric dams in the amphibian zone. The dams will bring inexpensive electricity, but they come at a cost.

"Whenever you put a dam in, the habitat behind it is flooded and destroyed," Fenolio noted. "These construction projects will impact the amphibian populations of southern Chile negatively, there's no question."

More stories about frogs: 

• Fungus hitting frogs hard 
• Scant froggy finds spark worries 
• Froggy finds raise hope for Haiti 
• Social networking to save frogs 

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).