There are more species of beetle than just about anything else on Earth — approximately 400,000 species described , with perhaps a million or more left to catalog . Now , researcher have identified 103 new species of weevil ( a tiny variety of beetle ) , all from a single Indonesian island .
Trigonopterus weevil are wee , egg - shaped insects , dimple like a golf game clod and bless with a bulbous nozzle . They ’re found in the thick afforest island flecked in the tepid seas between Asia and Australia , from Sumatra out to Samoa . Plenty of weevils had been observe on either end of this range , but taste in the middle was the jumbo island of Sulawesi , which had only one Trigonopterus , line in the 19th century .
“ We had bump hundreds of specie on the neighboring islands of New Guinea , Borneo and Java — why should Sulawesi with its lush habitat persist an empty outer space ? ” , said Alexander Riedel , entomologist at Germany ’s Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe and go author on the studypublished Thursday in the journal ZooKeys , in a statement .
Riedel — collaborating with theIndonesian Institute of Sciences — adjudicate to take a near tone at tough island ’s rainforest , conduct several field surveys on Sulawesi over a few years . The team collected a couplet thousand weevil , and then went through the longsighted summons of identifying what they were seeing . This involved looking key physical characteristics on the wee insects , but mostly relied on DNA “ barcoding”—analyzing a specific section of desoxyribonucleic acid that differ between coinage .
It turn out Sulawesi has a lot more than one Trigonopterus species .
The researchers describe 103 mintage of weevil that were entirely new to skill . All of them come out moderately similar at a coup d’oeil , but count closer reveals an raiment of differences . Some are long and tapered , others chunky and straightforward , and some are shaped like a lightbulb . Many species are politic and lustrous , but others have funny , scaly filaments on their backs , or ridges and wrinkles . They subtly vary in color , the fuzziness of their foot , and ( for males at least ) the shape of their penises , apparently .
With so many Modern specie to name , the researchers had to get creative .
Most of the species are named after a kinky forcible feature , or the placement where they were first found . But the team also draw inspiration from pop culture , distinguish one particularly small , squat , greenish metal money Trigonopterus yoda after a idolise Jedi Master of a similar mien . They also named a few mintage after character in theAsterixcomics series . Others were named after form in Greek mythology , like satyrs ( half - beast nature spirits ) and Artemis , the goddess of the hunt . Still more were named after influential biologists from chronicle .
Some of the weevils have truly epic name calling , like Trigonopterus incendium , which was find in Tanjung Api ( Cape of Fire ) , a region that spontaneously burps flaming innate gas . Others , like Trigonopterus squalidulus , whose name refer to how its rocky exoskeleton always gets encrust with filth and filth , are decidedly more humble .
The multifariousness of Trigonopterus weevils on Sulawesi is certainly huge , and the discovery of the new species serve fill in a spread in scientist ’ intellect of the evolutionary account of the beetles , which are thought to have island - hopped over millennia from Australia , detonate into dozens of species at each stop . This olympian “ speciation ” is likely because of their flightlessness and proclivity to specialize on sealed plants in modest cooking stove ; it ’s why most of the fresh - described weevils seem to be “ endemic ” to the specific localisation they were discover .
These same old habits may in reality be what put the weevils at risk of extinction in the face of widespread disforestation on Sulawesi . Unable to wing or live on outside of a lonesome mountain or timberland piece , many of the weevil ’ destiny are graft direct on the endurance of their home habitats .
But for now , the first step to conserving any species is figure out if it exists at all , so there ’s far more of the island to appraise . In a affirmation , Raden Pramesa Narakusumo , coauthor on the paper and conservator of beetles at the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense , Indonesian Research Center for Biology , observe that much of Sulawesi is yet to be explored for such small beetles .
“ Our survey is not yet complete and possibly we have just scratch up the surface . ”
beetlesconservationEvolutionIndonesiaInsectsScienceStar war
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