An invasive leaf-mining moth, feeding on cornelian cherry, has been gradually expanding its distributional range from its native Central Europe northwards for a period likely longer than 60 years. During that period, it has remained under the cover of a taxonomic confusion, while going by a name shared with another species that feeds on common […]
About the size of a sesame seed, a new species of wasp from Costa Rica, named Dendrocerus scutellaris, has elaborate branched antennae that could be used for finding mates. Or hosts. The new insect is described by PhD candidate Carolyn Trietsch, Dr. István Mikó and Dr. Andrew Deans of the Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State, USA, together […]
New members have joined the ranks of the snout moths – one of the largest groups within the insect order known formally as Lepidoptera, comprising all moths and butterflies. Recently, taxonomists Dr. Mingqiang Wang, Dr. Fuqiang Chen, Prof. Chaodong Zhu and Prof. Chunsheng Wu of the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences described two […]
New species can be named for all types of attributes, but Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County entomologist Brian Brown knew exactly what name to give a bizarre new fly species he discovered in the Brazilian Amazon. “As soon as I saw those bulging legs, I knew I had to name this one after Arnold,” says Brown. “Not […]
Invasive species have diverse impacts in different locations, including biodiversity loss, as a result of native species being outcompeted for similar resources. A U.S. research team, led by Dr. Ann Hajek, Cornell University, studied the case of an aggressive Eurasian woodwasp that has recently established in North America and poses a threat to a native species. […]
While not every taxonomic study is conducted with a nature conservation idea in mind, most ecological initiatives need to be backed by exhaustive taxonomic research. There simply isn’t a way to assess a species’ distributional range, migratory patterns or ecological trends without knowing what this species actually is and where it is coming from. In […]
New open access book provides essential background for molecular biodiversity researchers on international policy regarding use and transfer of genetic materials Molecular biology approaches, such as DNA barcoding, have become part of the standard toolkit for a growing number of biodiversity researchers and practitioners, with an increasing scope of applications in important areas, such as environmental […]
Two new treefrog species were discovered in the Amazon Basin of Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. Both had been previously misidentified as another superficially identical species. Curiously, one of them received a name translating to ‘demon’ or ‘devil’. The second one was named in honor of famous American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, because of his masterpiece A […]
Several literary classics from the fantasy genre are further immortalised and linked together thanks to a Brazilian research team who named seven new spiders after them. Spider characters from A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and the children’s favourite […]
In a major pan-European study, a research team from Germany have successfully extracted environmental DNA (eDNA) from as many as 218 lakes to refute a long-year belief that vital microorganisms do not differ significantly between freshwater bodies and geographic regions the way plants and animals do. Their new-age approach to biodiversity studies resulted in the […]