Scientists hunt for undiscovered species in NYC parks using DNA barcoding

In the green corridors of Central Park and Prospect Park, scientists are quietly dismantling one of biology's most persistent assumptions: that undiscovered life belongs only to remote wilderness. Entomologist Emily Hartop and a multinational team are deploying DNA barcoding to search New York City's most visited parks for insect species unknown to science, drawing on the sobering reality that roughly 90% of Earth's estimated animal species have never been formally named. The work is less a search for the exotic than a reckoning with how little we know about the living world immediately around