SIX new bat species and 15 new bird species have been discovered in the trial run of an ambitious plan to genetically “barcode” all life on Earth.
All the new species had previously been misclassified because they looked and sounded the same as other species. Only when the animals’ DNA had been screened did it become clear that they belonged to distinct species.
Researchers scanned the DNA of 643 bird species in North America – some 93 per cent of all species breeding in the region – and 87 bat species in Guyana to test the barcoding approach.
“A complete registry of all life on Earth is now…
