The Allacta Kalakkadensis species of cockroach found in Kalakkad-Mudanthurai region. A new cockroach species has been discovered by scientists of the Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, at the Western Ghats, a region with high species richness, and high percent endemicity. India is home to 182 cockroach species. With the new finding there 56 species in Tamil Nadu.
The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), with help from Gujarat’s forest department, is attempting for the first time a process to restore coral reefs using biorock or mineral accretion technology. A biorock structure was installed one nautical mile off the Mithapur coast in the Gulf of Kachchh on January 19. Biorock is the name given to the substance formed by electro accumulation of minerals dissolved in seawater on steel structures that are lowered onto the sea bed and are connected to a power source, in this case solar panels that float on the surface. In 2015, the same group of ZSI scientists with the support of the Gujarat forest department had successfully restored branching coral species (staghorn corals) belonging to the family Acroporidae (Acropora formosa, Acropora humilis, Montipora digitata) that had gone extinct about 10,000 years ago to the Gulf of Kachchh.
A new snake eel species residing in the Bay of Bengal has been discovered and documented this month (January) by the Estuarine Biology Regional Centre (EBRC) of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) at Gopalpur-on-sea in Odisha. This new marine species has been named Ophichthus kailashchandrai to honour the vast contributions of Dr. Kailash Chandra, Director of ZSI, to Indian animal taxonomy. Ophichthus kailashchandrai is the eighth species of the Ophichthus genus found on the Indian coast. It is the fifth new species discovered by the Gopalpur ZSI in the last two years. New species In 2019, two new species of marine eel, Gymnothorax and amanensesis and Gymnothorax smithi were been discovered by this ZSI centre.
