Scientists find new species of dragonfly, grasshopper and a fluorescent spider

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By Tim Cocks

June 3 (Reuters) - Wildlife experts found eight new species of dragonfly, three unknown grasshoppers and some 60 ‌new butterflies and moths in vivid hues during a ‌trip to Angola's Lisima plateau in February, a conservation group said on Wednesday.

The Wilderness ​Project visited the waters that flow through the plateau and which feed four of Africa's major rivers: the Congo, Okavango, Zambezi and Cuanza.

New species included an armoured, predatory cricket, a previously undescribed species of copper ‌caterpillar and its adult ⁠butterfly, and a crowned crab spider that fluoresces under ultraviolet light.

Experts also found a new blood orange-hued species ⁠of ladybird orb-web spider which mimics ladybirds in signaling to predators with a bright colour - normally a darker red - that it is too ​bitter or ​toxic.

"The armoured crickets are very cool ... ​very fierce-looking," expedition leader Rob ‌Taylor told Reuters. "As a defense mechanism, they can actually squirt fluid onto whoever's trying to attack them."

Scientists the world over are frantically trying to record species as they reckon with a global ecological crisis that has put a million plant and animal species on the ‌brink of extinction. They estimate there ​are 8.7 million species in the world, ​of which science has ​identified only 1.5 million.

Many are fast disappearing because of ‌human activity, with more than 800 ​animal species going ​extinct since around 1500.

Taylor said wildlife in the Lisima plateau was threatened by "tree-felling, deforestation and ... the artisanal diamond mining industry," ​as well as by ‌slash-and-burn agriculture, which razes natural forests to use the soil ​for planting, only to see the nutrients wash away.

(Reporting ​by Tim CocksEditing by Alexandra Hudson)