蜜芽传媒

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conservation group has published a list of 224 newly discovered species from the greater Mekong region - an area which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. They include a monkey with ghostly white circles around its eyes, frogs, newts and the only known succulent bamboo species.

Professor Thomas Ziegler, a curator at Cologne zoo in Germany and responsible for the Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Projects in Vietnam and Laos, explains the significance of the finds and how the team realised that they were making new discoveries. He says modern molecular analysis helps with the identification of new species, but that climate change and forest destruction means that these can be lost relatively quickly too.

Photo: The Popa langur monkey, one of the 224 new species that have been found in the Greater Mekong area Credit: WWF-Myanmar/PA Wire