This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. There are an estimated 73,300 species of tree on Earth, 9,000 of which have yet to be discovered, according to a global count of tree species by thousands of researchers who used second world war codebreaking techniques created at Bletchley Park to evaluate the number of unknown species. Researchers working on the ground in 90 countries collected information on 38 million trees, sometimes walking for days and camping in remote places to reach them. The study found there are about 14 percent more tree species than previously reported and that a third of undiscovered tree species are rare, meaning they could be vulnerable to extinction by human-driven changes in land use and the climate crisis. "It is a massive effort for the whole world to document our forests," said Jingjing Liang, a lead author of the paper and professor of quantitative forest ecology at Purdue University in Indiana, US. "Counting the number of tree species worldwide is like a puzzle with pieces spreading all over the world. We solved it together as a team, each sharing our own piece."

Chinese researchers have found two previously unknown species of parasitic wasps in a swarm hovering 11,000 feet (3,400m) above the sea in Tibet. The two species look very similar to each other because they belonged to the same genus (Microplitis), according to the researchers. Specimens of the wasps were kept in the Institute of Beneficial Insects at the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU) in China after being collected in 2013. Chinese researchers have found two previously unknown species of parasitic wasps in a swarm hovering 11,000 feet (3,400m) above the sea in Tibet. The newly described wasps have been named Microplitis paizhensis and Microplitis bomiensis, after where they were found in Tibet.