New Species - katydid

A jabbing spiny-legged katydid, new species of plants and animals discovered during just two months of deep rainforest exploration in a small portion of Papua New Guinea's remote forest-cloaked mountains last year.

In the Nakanai Mountains on the large western Pacific island of New Britain, CI scientists worked with local communities to assess new, endemic, and previously un described species at three different sites ranging from lowlands to high elevations in the rugged rain forest-covered mountains.

emerald-green katydid, a brilliantly pink-eyed katydid that lives in the forest canopy (Caedicia), and a sharp-legged katydid with an especially interesting defense mechanism that, when threatened, prompts it to hold its unusually large and spiny legs vertically above its head to jab at predators, a behavior which RAP scientist Piotr Naskrecki described from firsthand experience as "very painful".