New Grasshopper Species Discovered In Amber Collected 50 Years Ago

July 31, 2014

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

While searching through a massive collection of 20 million-year-old amber originally discovered in the Dominican Republic some five decades ago, researchers from the Illinois Natural History Survey made a surprising discovery: a new species of miniature grasshopper that is no larger than a rose thorn.

According to Rachel Feltman of The Washington Post, the creature was named Electrotettix attenboroughi in honor of famed naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, and it was housed in one small piece of a 160-pound collection of amber that had been sitting, all but forgotten, in a five-gallon drum.

While modern relatives of the creature have no wings, the newly discovered grasshopper (which belongs to the family Tetrigidae and is also known as a pygmy locust) possesses vestigial wings, Sam Heads, a paleontologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, told Feltman. While he said he “wouldn’t exactly call it a missing link,” he noted that the creature is “an interesting intermediate between a fully winged ancestor and a wingless descendent.”

Heads and his colleagues believe that Electrotettix attenboroughi is believed to have lived between 18 and 20 million years ago, and consumed a diet comprised primarily of moss, algae and fungi. It was discovered in an amber fragment that also contained wasps, ants, midges, plant remnants and fungi, which reveals much about both the physiological needs of the creature and habitat in which it lived.

While Feltman said that the pygmy locust is the first published discovery from the Illinois Natural History Survey team, Heads is confident that several more are on the way. Likewise, co-author and laboratory technician Jared Thomas noted the amber will take several years to get through, and that there’s no telling what they might discover.

“Grasshoppers are very rare in amber and this specimen is extraordinarily well-preserved,” Heads said in a statement, explaining that he creature’s name was chosen because Attenborough “has a personal interest in amber” and because he was “one of my childhood heroes and still is one of my heroes and so I decided to name the species in his honor – with his permission of course.”

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New grasshopper species named after Grammy winner

Date:

May 8, 2014

Source:

University of Central Florida

Summary:

A newly discovered grasshopper now bears the name of Grammy-award winning singer and activist Ana Lila Downs Sanchez. The scientists named the new species discovered on the side of a mountain road near Oaxaca, Mexico, after the Mexican-American singer as a nod to her efforts to preserve indigenous culture and penchant for wearing colorful, local costumes as part of her performances.

Continued

And That Is How the Desert Locust Lost Its Memory

Jan. 14, 2014 — The desert locust (a type of grasshopper), much like Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, goes from being an innocuous solitary-living individual to become a voracious gregarious animal that destroys everything on its path (and back). These two very different "personas" are remarkable adaptations of a single genome to distinct environments. But apparently, this flexibility is even more impressive says Patricio Simōes, Jeremy Niven and Swidbert Ott from the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal and the University of Cambridge, as they reveal that the locust' solitarious and gregarious forms also have different memory and learning abilities to suit the needs of the two life stages.

Continued

Tiny insect discovered in wilds of Belize

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Feb. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. entomologists say they've discovered a tiny grasshopper-like insect in Belize and named it in commemoration of a Mayan people who once lived there.

Researchers have dubbed the tiny hopper Ripipteryx mopana after the Mopan people, a Mayan group native to the Central American region.

Scientists from the University of Illinois discovered the new species in the tropical rainforests of the Toledo District in southern Belize, which is bordered by Mexico and Guatemala.

"Belize is famous for its biodiversity, although very little is known about the insect fauna of the southern part of the country. This is particularly true of the Orthoptera -- the grasshoppers, crickets and katydids," entomologist Sam Heads said in a university release Wednesday.

The tiny black, white and orange colored grasshopper-like species -- less than a quarter inch long -- uses its large jumping hind legs to escape predators, the researchers said.

"The new insect is the first representative of its family ever to be found in Belize," Heads said.

"Given the amount of high quality habitats in the region, it isn't really surprising that new species still await discovery, especially in the less-explored areas."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/02/15/Tiny-insect-discovered-in-wilds-of-Belize/UPI-23501329334216/#ixzz1mYKSJMfH