Glow-in-the-dark cockroach among top 10 new species

A glowing cockroach, a monkey with a blue behind and a meat-eating sponge snagged spots on a list of top 10 new species named in 2012, scientists announced Thursday.
In its sixth year, the Top 10 New Species list is compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and is announced on the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus. An 18th-century botanist, Linnaeus created the modern system for naming and classifying species.
The panel plucked the top 10 new species from more than 140 nominations; to be considered, the species had to have been officially named in 2012 and described with the appropriate code of nomenclature.
One such creature with an odd feature is the glow-in-the-dark cockroach, named Lucihormetica luckae, whose luminescence may help the creepy-crawly mimic toxic click beetles and thereby avoid predators. In addition, a carnivorous sponge shaped like a harp also made the list. The sponge (Chondrocladia lyra), which lives nearly 2 miles beneath the Pacific Ocean, sports 20 barbed vanes that resemble a harp’s strings. Once it captures meaty prey, the sponge envelops it in a thin membrane and slowly begins to digest the animal.