Date: March 7, 2019
Source: Pensoft Publishers
The
Indonesian island of Sulawesi has been long known for its enigmatic fauna,
including the deer-pig (babirusa) and the midget buffalo. However, small
insects inhabiting the tropical forests have remained largely unexplored.
Such is
the case for the tiny weevils of the genus Trigonopterus of which
only a single species had been known from the island since 1885. Nevertheless,
a recent study conducted by a team of German and Indonesian scientists resulted
in the discovery of a total of 103 new to science species, all identified
as Trigonopterus. The beetles are described in the open-access
journal ZooKeys.
"We
had found hundreds of species on the neighboring islands of New Guinea, Borneo
and Java -- why should Sulawesi with its lush habitats remain an empty
space?" asked entomologist and lead author of the study Dr Alexander
Riedel, Natural History Museum Karlsruhe (Germany).
In fact,
Riedel knew better. Back in 1990, during a survey of the fauna living on
rainforest foliage in Central Sulawesi, he encountered the first specimens that
would become the subject of the present study. Over the next years, a series of
additional fieldwork, carried out in collaboration with the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences (LIPI), managed to successfully complete the picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!