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Vox is setting out to discover a new animal species in the heart of New York City.
We’ll focus our search on insects that are both incredibly diverse and poorly understood, including parasitoid wasps (which lay their eggs in other insects) and flies in the family Phoridae (known as the scuttle flies). These animal groups fall into a category called “dark taxa” because most of their species — of which there are tens of thousands — are still undescribed by science and thus “in the dark.”
We’ll wrap up the collection process at the end of August, and then work with scientists to see if we might have discovered something new. We’ll post any project updates here.
For more information about the project and related stories, please see below.
