Swiss scientists "discovered" two new animal species in northern Sarawak

KUCHING, Aug 25, 2014:  A team of scientists from the Natural History Museum of Berne, Switzerland, has discovered two new animal species in the tropical rainforests in northern Sarawak.

Bruno Manser (picture, left)  in Sarawak in 1999.

The two new species are a spider of the goblin spider genus Aposphragisma, named Aposphragisma brunomanseri, and the Murud black slender toad, Ansonia vidua.

Aposphragisma brunomanseri has been collected by a Dutch-Swiss research expedition in Western Sarawak in the 1990s and has been described during a recent international research effort by zoologist Marco Thoma from Berne’s Natural History Museum.

The species epithet is dedicated to Bruno Manser, a Swiss environmental activist and ethnologist, most famous for his support of the nomadic Penan people against the destruction of the pristine rain forest in Sarawak.

The Murud black slender toad, Ansonia vidua, has also been discovered in Pulong Tau National Park during an international expedition directed by Dr. Stefan Hertwig from the Natural History Museum of Berne and Berne University’s Institute for Ecology and Evolution.

The new species has been discovered during a night excursion near a river at an altitude of 2150m at the Gunung Murud mountain in the region where Bruno Manser went missing.

Bruno Manser was born on Aug  25, 1954 in Basel, Switzerland. From 1984 to 1990, he lived in Sarawak with the Penan, South East Asia’s last nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Ansonia vidua (picture, right) has been found in the Gunung Murud region, where Manser disappeared in May 2000 .

After returning to Switzerland, he founded the Bruno Manser Fund, a human rights and environmental organization that champions the rights of Sarawak’s indigenous peoples.

Manser has been missing since his last trip to Sarawak in May 2000.