More evidence for new species hidden in plain sight

Two articles published today in the online open access journals BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Biology provide further evidence that we have hugely underestimated the number of species with which we share our planet. Today sophisticated genetic techniques mean that superficially identical animals previously classed as members of a single species, including the frogs and giraffes in these studies, could in fact come from several distinct ‘cryptic’ species.