Thursday 3 January 2013

41 new species of moths discovered on Congo


Tiny leaf mining moths have very unusual habits
December 2012. In the rain forests of the Congo, where mammals and birds are hunted to near-extinction, an impenetrable sound of buzzing insects blankets the atmosphere.

Because it is a fairly inaccessible region with political unrest, much of the Congo's insect biodiversity remains largely unexplored. In a new book, researchers at the University of Florida and the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium provide insect biodiversity information for this area in Central Africa that is increasingly under threat from habitat destruction.

41 new species
Focusing on a group of leaf-mining moths, researchers name 41 new species, nearly doubling the number previously known from the region. Leaf miners occur worldwide and the biodiversity research is important because some species are agricultural pests, while others help control unwanted invasive plant species. Some are also known to delay plant aging.

"When we began this project, we had no idea how many species would be out there," said co-author Akito Kawahara, assistant curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. "In a two-week field trip, we discovered nearly 50 potentially new species, which is really surprising. There is still an enormous amount of life out there that we know very little of."

Tiny moths
Lead author Jurate DePrins has been working on leaf miners in the Congo for nearly 10 years and was joined by Kawahara about five years ago. As the name suggests, the small moths burrow within leaves as larvae, making them particularly difficult to find. Adult moths measure only about 2 to 5 millimetres in length, but they can be extraordinarily beautiful with colourful markings and metallic scales, Kawahara said.

Flat caterpillars
"The caterpillars are completely flat so they can live inside the thin leaf," Kawahara said. "If you think of a regular caterpillar and then you squished it and shrunk it, that's what they look like."

After collecting caterpillars in the wild, researchers raise the larvae to adulthood on-site, a process that takes less than a week for some species.

Micro-world
"It's so hard to tell what's actually happening because they're so small and they get overlooked, but if you look at what is happening inside a leaf under a microscope, it's just an incredible world," Kawahara said. "You'll see a tiny wasp larva living within a caterpillar, and another, even smaller wasp larva living inside that larger wasp larva that is inside the moth larva. It really opens your eyes to this incredible, unknown world and makes you think, ‘What is going on here?' It's truly amazing."

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