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3 Jul 2026ENVIRONMENT3 questions

709 New Animals in One Year — and 64% of Them From Three Regions

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Article summary

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change released Animal Discoveries 2025 and Plant Discoveries 2025 — compiled respectively by the Zoological Survey of India and the Botanical Survey of India — at ZSI's 111th Foundation Day in Kolkata. India added 709 new animal species in the year: 483 genuinely new to science and 226 recorded in India for the first time, taking the country's documented faunal inventory to 1,05,953 species. Kerala led with 98 new animal species, followed by West Bengal with 76, Karnataka with 67 and Arunachal Pradesh with 65; the order Hymenoptera — ants, bees and wasps — contributed the single largest share at 106 species. On the botanical side 353 taxa were added, comprising 339 species and 14 infraspecific taxa, of which 221 were new to science and 132 were new distributional records, with Arunachal Pradesh leading at 49, then Uttarakhand at 39 and Kerala at 37. Roughly 64 per cent of all discoveries came from the Himalayan region, the Western Ghats and the north-eastern states. Notable additions include the Himalayan bat Myotis himalaicus, Irwin's wolf snake Lycodon irwini, two green fan-throated lizards of the genus Ptyctolaemus, and the edible fungus Hericium indicum.

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recallTests whether you read the article and retained key facts.
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applicationTests whether you can apply the concept to a new scenario.
1Q
analysisTests whether you can reason across multiple related facts.
1Q

Sample questions — answers revealed after test

ENVIRONMENTRecallEasy

Q1. With reference to Animal Discoveries 2025 and Plant Discoveries 2025, which one of the following statements is correct?

ABoth reports are published by the Botanical Survey of India, the Zoological Survey of India having been merged into it.
BAll 709 animal additions were species new to science, none being previously described organisms newly recorded in India.
CThe Zoological Survey of India recorded 709 new animal species — 483 new to science and 226 recorded in India for the first time — taking the documented faunal inventory to 1,05,953 species.
DKerala led the plant discoveries with 49 taxa, ahead of Arunachal Pradesh.
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ENVIRONMENTApplicationMedium

Q2. About 64 per cent of the year's additions came from the Himalayan region, the Western Ghats and the north-eastern States. Which one of the following inferences is best supported?

AThese zones overlap India's biodiversity hotspots, where high endemism and complex terrain both generate species and leave them undocumented for longer — so concentration of discovery reflects concentration of undescribed diversity.
BSpecies are migrating into these regions from the rest of India in response to climate change.
CBiodiversity in the rest of India has declined to the point where no undescribed species remain there.
DThe figure reflects only that survey teams were deployed exclusively in these three regions during the year.
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ENVIRONMENTAnalysisHard

Q3. Consider the following statements regarding the 2025 discovery reports: 1. The order Hymenoptera, comprising ants, bees and wasps, contributed the largest single share of animal discoveries at 106 species. 2. Plant Discoveries 2025 added 353 taxa, of which 221 are new to science and 132 are new distributional records. 3. Among the notable taxa were the Himalayan bat Myotis himalaicus and Hericium indicum, a newly described species of edible fungus. Which of the statements given above are correct?

A1 only
B1 and 2 only
C2 and 3 only
D1, 2 and 3
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