Lazarus Taxon

Today's newsletter is a bit of hopeful storytelling to brighten your day.

Paleontologists use the term Lazarus taxon to refer to species that disappeared from the fossil record millions of years ago, but were then found alive, often in obscure, isolated, or highly specialized habitats where no one had thought to look.

The classic example is the coelacanth, a huge and bizarre lobe-fined fish that was well preserved in the fossil record from 410 to 66 million years ago. But after 66 million years ago there was no evidence of this fish, so when one was unexpectedly captured in 1938, it made headline news around the world.

When I was a child, I remember reading a book called Search for a Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth, and the gripping tale of naturalists discovering lost species in exotic places was one of the stories that inspired my own journey to becoming a naturalist.

These stories are amazing, but ecologists and conservation biologists also use the term "Lazarus taxon" to describe species that were thought to be extinct but are then rediscovered—and these stories are even more important.

Rediscovering long lost "extinct" species is both incredibly exciting and incredibly important work. Even better these discoveries are incredibly hopeful and reinspire critical conservation efforts, often in the nick of time.

It's hard to protect species, or their habitats, if the species no longer exists, or if conservationists don't even know what parts of the habitat to protect. For example, the Chalazodes bubble-nest frog, last seen in 1876, was rediscovered nesting in large hollow bamboos in 2011. With this piece of information, it then became possible to better manage bamboo harvesting in the frog's critical habitats.

If you'd like a dose of hope, it's worth clicking through the long list of rediscovered species on the Lazarus Taxon Wikipedia page instead of doom-scrolling through the news of the day. Each species has some type of incredible story about how it was lost, or how it was rediscovered—often through fanatic dedication and tireless efforts against all odds.

For instance, the Lord Howe Island stick insect was once so common that it was used as fish bait, then a supply ship ran aground on the island in 1918 and black rats from the ship decimated the island's ecology. These magnificent insects were wiped out and presumed extinct until climbers discovered a dead specimen on Ball's Pyramid in 1964.

It took until 2001 for someone else to approach this monolith and search for living specimens. Landing on, and climbing, the rock in the daytime was unsuccessful, so the team returned at night and tried again—finding 24 living insects under a single shrub. Due to intensive breeding programs there are now thousands of these insects and a renewed effort to permanently eradicate black rats from Lord Howe Island.

There are many amazing stories like this that could each fill a book, and a number of efforts are now underway to find lost species because these discoveries have profound conservation implications. More than once, species have been rediscovered at the exact moment that their last patch of habitat was scheduled to be cleared!