Star Wars and Asterix characters amongst 103 beetles new to science from Sulawesi, Indonesia

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.

Continued

Tree loss pushing beetles to the brink

By Helen BriggsBBC News

5 March 2018

The loss of trees across Europe is pushing beetles to the brink of extinction, according to a new report.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature assessed the status of 700 European beetles that live in old and hollowed wood.

Almost a fifth (18%) are at risk of extinction due to the decline of ancient trees, the European Red List of Saproxylic Beetles report found.

This puts them among the most threatened insect groups in Europe.

Saproxylic beetles play a role in natural processes, such as decomposition and the recycling of nutrients.

They also provide an important food source for birds and mammals and some are involved in pollination.

"Some beetle species require old trees that need hundreds of years to grow, so conservation efforts need to focus on long-term strategies to protect old trees across different landscapes in Europe, to ensure that the vital ecosystem services provided by these beetles continue," said Jane Smart, director of the IUCN Global Species Programme.

Logging, tree loss and wood harvesting all contribute to the loss of habitat for the beetles, said the IUCN. Other major threats include urbanisation and tourism development, and an increase in wildfires in the Mediterranean region.

Conservation efforts need to focus on long-term strategies to protect old trees and deadwood across forests, pastureland, orchards and urban areas, the report recommended.

Continued 

Beetles' bright colors used for camouflage instead of warning off predators

First study to examine beetle colouration in their natural habitat prompts discovery

Date:  December 4, 2017

Source:  Yale-NUS College

Summary:

Biologists have discovered that the bright color patterns of beetles are not a warning signal to predators as previously believed, but actually a form of camouflage, turning an old assumption on its head.

NUS College Postdoctoral Fellow Eunice Tan has discovered that the bright colour patterns of beetles are not a warning signal to predators as previously believed, but actually a form of camouflage, turning an old assumption on its head. Dr Tan, along with four collaborators from Australia and Spain, examined 51 species of Australian leaf beetles in their natural habitats, and discovered that each beetle's colour pattern is similar to the host plants that the beetle lives on, suggesting that those conspicuous colours help the beetle blend in with the plants it inhabits. The study was recently published as an open-access article in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Continued 

Insect Walking Dead: How a Fungus Turns Beetles into Killer Zombies

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | June 15, 2017 07:11am ET 

A fungus worthy of its own horror film is on the loose, taking over the bodies of goldenrod soldier beetles and turning them into contagious zombies that can infect their beetle brethren, a new study finds.

The fungus has a creepy but foolproof modus operandi: About two weeks after it infects the goldenrod soldier beetle (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus), it orders the beetle to climb up a plant and clamp its mandibles around a flower.

Then, the beetle dies, swinging like a scarecrow from the flower and giving the fungus ample opportunity to infect nearby beetles, said study lead investigator Donald Steinkraus, a professor of entomology at the University of Arkansas.

Steinkraus first spotted these bizarre, zombie-like beetles on a research farm in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He remembers seeing hundreds of yellow-and-black soldier beetles on a patch of blooming wild asters. The beetles were eating pollen and mating — "the flowers were sort of like a dating site that also offered food," Steinkraus told Live Science in an email.

Read on 

Beetles pollinated orchids millions of year ago, fossil evidence shows

Date: August 22, 2016

Source: Entomological Society of America

When most people hear the word "pollinator," they think of bees and butterflies. However, certain beetles are known to pollinate plants as well, and new fossil evidence indicates that they were doing so 20 million years ago.

A new study in American Entomologist by George Poinar, Jr. (Oregon State University) describes beetles found in fossilized amber with orchid pollen in their mouthparts.

"My paper points out that beetles may play a more important role in pollinating orchids than originally thought, and that they have been doing so for some 20 million years," Poinar said.

Some present-day beetles use orchids for nectar, but no fossil evidence has ever been found showing beetles in the evolutionary past pollinating orchids -- until now.

The first specimen was a hidden-snout beetle (subfamily Cryptorhynchinae) found in amber from the Dominican Republic. This Dominican specimen had pollinaria from an orchid described as Cylindrocites browni attached to its thorax. The other specimen was a toe-winged beetle (family Ptilodactylidae) that was found in amber from Mexico. This toe-winged beetle had pollinaria from an orchid described as Annulites mexicana attached to its mouthparts.

The beetle in Dominican amber was estimated to be from 20 to 45 million years old, and the beetle in Mexican amber was in strata estimated to be from 22 to 26 million years old.

While other beetles are known to pollinate plants, no current-day hidden-snout beetles have been seen visiting orchid plants, and no current-day toe-winged beetles have been seen with pollinaria.

Continued  

Too much sex causes genitals to change shape, beetle study shows

 May 20, 2016

Sexual conflict between males and females can lead to changes in the shape of their genitals, according to research on burying beetles by scientists at the University of Exeter.

The study, published today in the journal Evolution, provides new evidence that conflict over how often mating takes place can lead to males evolving longer penis-like organs and females larger 'claws' on their genitalia, within ten generations.

Genital shape varies enormously across the animal kingdom compared, for instance, to body shape. One reason for this may be that the shapes of male and female genitalia co-evolve as a result of sexual conflict. Dr Megan Head, one of the authors of the new study said: "It takes two to tango, so when changes in shape in one sex leads to corresponding changes in the other sex this is known as co-evolution."

Sexual conflict over mating occurs because, whilst having lots of sex is usually good for a male—as it increases the number of offspring he is likely to produce—it is not so good for a female because she only needs to mate a few times to fertilise all her eggs. In addition too much sex can be costly for female burying beetles as it reduces their ability to provide parental care.

In order to test whether sexual conflict could lead to co-evolutionary changes in the shape of genitals the researchers artificially selected pairs of burying beetles for either high mating rates or low rates for ten generations. The research found that this artificial selection resulted in changes in the shapes of both male and female genitalia.

It also found that changes in one sex were reflected by changes in the shape of the other sex, showing there was co-evolution. The greatest changes in shape occurred in beetles selected for high mating rates, where sexual conflict was greatest: males evolved to have longer intromittent organs (penis-like structures) and females responded by evolving more pronounced 'claws' on their genitalia.

Read more at:

Genes that encourage same-sex mating in beetles help opposite gender reproduce

'The genetic mechanism explaining the occurrence of same-sex sexual behaviour that we demonstrate in these beetles could apply equally well in very different animals'

Ian Johnston Science Correspondent 

The reasons why it is common for animals to engage in sexual behaviour with others of the same gender has long puzzled evolutionary biologists.

After all, it doesn’t actually lead to the production of offspring and the continuation of the creature’s genes.

But now researchers in Sweden have discovered that genes which encourage beetles to engage in what they call same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB) can also be evolutionarily advantageous to the opposite sex.

When they bred male beetles selectively for SSB, they found that “their sisters laid more eggs and produced more offspring than before”. And breeding females for SSB resulted in genes that helped the males reproduce.

Professor David Berger, of Uppsala University, said: “Our findings show that studying the genetic links between different characteristics in males and females can hold major clues to how genetic conflicts between the sexes shape the evolution of traits, and same-sex sexual behaviours are just one example of this. 

“The genetic mechanism explaining the occurrence of SSB that we demonstrate in these beetles could apply equally well in very different animals.”

Read on ...

Lava attraction: 74 new beetle species found hiding in plain sight on a Hawaiian volcano

December 11, 2015

Confined to the limits of Haleakala volcano, Maui Island, Hawaii, the beetle fauna there turns out to be not only extremely diverse, but very abundant as well. When Prof. James Liebherr of the Cornell University Insect Collection thoroughly sampled beetle populations on the volcano, he identified 116 species of round-waisted predatory beetles, including 74 new to science. The taxonomic revision, complete with descriptions of the new species, is now published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The present discoveries and observations are certainly surprising due to their scale, even though it has been long known that the Hawaiian Islands support disproportionately high levels of biodiversity. For this group of native round-waisted beetles, calledMecyclothorax in the zoological naming system, there are 239 species across the Hawaiian Islands, all of them descended from a single colonizing species.

The 116 species known from Haleakala make that volcano the center of biodiversity for this group within Hawaii. These beetles' evolution during the 1.2-million-year lifespan of Haleakala volcano means they have speciated faster than most organisms on Earth, including the Hawaiian Drosophila and the cichlid fishes of eastern Africa.

Read more at: 

Natural History Museum, London, Yields Remarkable New Beetle Specimens from Brazil

Jan. 23, 2014 — A visit to the Natural History Museum, London, yielded an unexpected surprise for Dr. Joseph Parker, a UK biologist based in New York at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History.

Among the 22,000 drawers of specimens that comprise the Coleoptera (beetle) collection housed in the Department of Entomology, was a new rove beetle genus collected during the 1990s in Manaus, a region of the Brazilian Amazon. The new genus is described in the open access journa lZooKeys.

The beetles, which measure only 3 mm in length, have a remarkable sexual dimorphism: the male has large eyes with over one hundred eye facets, whereas the female eyes have a paltry 12 facets. The male also has large flight wings, while the female has no wings at all. It's likely that the male does most of the searching for mates, while the female doesn't develop large eyes or wings and invests instead in egg production.

read further

Beetles Modify Emissions of Greenhouse Gases from Cow Pats

Aug. 22, 2013 — Cattle contribute to global warming by burping and farting large amounts of greenhouse gases. Some of the same gases are also emitted from cow pats on pastures. But now researchers from the University of Helsinki have found that beetles living in cow pats may reduce emissions of the key greenhouse gas -- methane.

Agriculture is one of the biggest sources of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Among these, cattle farming for meat and milk are major sources of methane, a gas with a potent warming effect. Much of this methane comes from the guts of ruminating cattle, but some escapes from dung pats on pastures. Now researchers from the University of Helsinki have found that beetles living in the cow pats may reduce emissions of methane. The study has just been published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Atte Penttilä, who undertook the study for his Masters, explains: "Cow pats offer a prime food for a large number of organisms. In fact, there are probably as many beetle species living in dung as there are bird species on this planet."

Of the dung beetles living in Northern Europe, most spend their entire lives within the dung pats. "We believe that these beetles exert much of their impact by simply digging around in the dung. Methane is primarily born under anaerobic conditions, and the tunneling by beetles seems to aerate the pats. This will have a major impact on how carbon escapes from cow pats into the atmosphere."

Continued

Satellites Spy Beetle Attacks on Forests

A new computer program detected a slow-motion decline, and subsequent revival, of forests in the Pacific Northwest in recent years. But what was behind this mysterious pattern? 

"It was, as it turns out, bugs," said Robert Kennedy, a remote sensing specialist at Boston University who designed the computer program, in a NASA statement.

Kennedy's program, called LandTrendr, can detect minute changes in the health of forests by analyzing wavelengths of light given off by the landscape and recorded in satellite images. Different types of vegetation reflect different wavelengths of light, often in ways that the naked eye can't detect.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/26286-beetles-eat-forests-from-space.html

Seven new beetle species identified in Canada

Tiny forest beetles are not rare

November 2012. Seven beetle species new to science have been discovered by a young University of Alberta researcher just starting out in her career. Charlene Wood, who had only just finished her master's degree in the Department of Renewable Resources, noted the tinier-than-usual species while studying beetles in decaying aspen trees in northwestern Alberta.

Now Wood, in collaboration with fellow scientists, is preparing to describe the beetles for science. Having studied them over the past four years, Wood is becoming recognized for her knowledge of this group, known by only a few other experts across the globe.

Deadwood
Her study of deadwood-a largely overlooked part of the North American boreal forest-is one of the few studies in Canada focused on the rich diversity of beetles that dwell in decaying wood. Wood's work revealed different beetles in each stage of the decay sequence in aspen wood. Along with recording seven new species in this habitat, Wood found an additional 47 beetle species not previously known to occur in Alberta-a significant addition to the list of provincial species.

Wood said "It's a dream, as a biologist. I certainly didn't think I would discover new species when I began my project. It's an eye-opener. There are several species right under our noses that we didn't know even existed."

Less than 3 millimetres long
All seven species she found are less than three millimetres long; most beetles studied are larger and more conspicuous, Wood said. Six of the species feed on fungus and are members of the group known as minute brown scavenger beetles. The seventh species is a monotomid beetle, which is thought live in the tunnels created by bark beetles in newly dead trees and feed on fungus and larvae of other beetles.

"Deadwood offers a whole variety of distinct habitats, and those habitats are home to hundreds of beetle species, some of which haven't been scientifically reported yet," added Wood, who has successfully defended her thesis and admits to being excited about finding the beetles.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/forest-beetles.html

Size Does Matter in Sexual Selection, at Least Among Beetles

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2012) — A new collaborative project among researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Cincinnati has, for the first time, demonstrated experimentally the evolutionary force behind the rapid evolution of male genitals, focusing on a species of seed beetle.

 This mechanism is revealed in a study published October 25 in the scientific journal Current Biology. The experiments leading to this paper involved a species of seed beetle known as Callosobruchus maculatus. Mating among these beetles involves several males engaging in copulation with individual females.

"When a female mates with several males, the males compete over the fertilization of her eggs," said Michal Polak, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati, one of the co-authors. "Because females mate with multiple males, the function of the male copulatory organ may determine which of the males will fertilize most of her eggs. Our results show that the morphology of the male genitalia affects his fertilization success in these beetles."

The competition to produce offspring is the driving force of evolution. Competition among males occurring after insemination may be an important evolutionary force that has led to the evolution of a diversity of shapes and sizes of male sexual organs, the co-authors assert. This competition among males has generated a great biological diversity that they believe can directly contribute to the formation of new species.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025130924.htm

Why Are There So Many Species of Beetles and So Few Crocodiles?

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2012) — There are more than 400,000 species of beetles and only two species of the tuatara, a reptile cousin of snakes and lizards that lives in New Zealand. Crocodiles and alligators, while nearly 250 million years old, have diversified into only 23 species. Why evolution has produced "winners" -- including mammals and many species of birds and fish -- and "losers" is a major question in evolutionary biology.

Scientists have often posited that because some animal and plant lineages are much older than others, they have had more time to produce new species (the dearth of crocodiles notwithstanding). This idea -- that time is an important predictor of species number -- underlies many theoretical models used by biologists. However, it fails to explain species numbers across all multi-cellular life on the planet, a team of life scientists reports Aug. 28 in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120828171744.htm

Predatory Beetles Eavesdrop On Ants' Chemical Conversations to Find Best Egg-Laying Sites

ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2012) — Predatory beetles can detect the unique alarm signal released by ants that are under attack by parasitic flies, and the beetles use those overheard conversations to guide their search for safe egg-laying sites on coffee bushes.

Azteca instabilis ants patrol coffee bushes and emit chemical alarm signals when they're under attack by phorid flies. In an article published online July 27 in the journal Ecology and Evolution, University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues show that pregnant lady beetles intercept the ants' alarm pheromones, which let the beetles know that it's safe to deposit their eggs.

The findings, which may have practical implications for pest management on coffee plantations, are the first documentation of a complex cascade of interactions mediated by ant pheromones, according to the authors.

"It is too often the case that pest management in agriculture focuses on finding a magic bullet solution to every problem," said U-M ecologist Ivette Perfecto, professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and co-author of the Ecology and Evolution paper.

First author of the paper is Hsun-Yi Hsieh, a graduate student at the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Read on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120803102937.htm

Beetle Flight: Flapping Protective Wings Increase Lift

ScienceDaily (May 29, 2012) — The forewings of beetles, the elytra, are hardened structures which protect the insect's flying wings and body. The function of the forewings in flight has been questioned, which is what prompted researchers at Lund University's Department of Biology to study how the forewings and the underlying flying wings work in dung beetles. The researchers studied the air flow created by the wings when the beetles fly in a wind tunnel. The wind tunnel in Lund is one of a few of its kind in the world.

"The results show that the forewings, which are held out and flap during flight, generate lift, helping the beetles to stay airborne," says Christoffer Johansson Westheim, researcher at Lund University.

The study also shows, however, that the beetles are less effective at generating lift than other animals, as a result of their forewings negatively affecting their flying wings. Thus the protection afforded by the hardened forewings comes at a cost in the form of lower efficiency in flight. One conclusion to be drawn from this is that if the flying wings alone could provide enough power to keep the insect in flight, the forewings would fold back over the body while the beetle is flying, which is precisely what happens in some species. The study is the first of its kind on beetles, but the researchers consider that the results could apply generally to beetles whose flying wings flap behind forewings -- despite the fact that the dung beetles are a fairly extreme case, with a body weight of 5-7 grams and a wingspan of around 15 centimetres.

Read more:   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120529073816.htm 

New species of beetle discovered in Palawan

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY—Scientists have discovered a new species of beetle that dwells in the mountain rivers of Southern Palawan and said the find indicated that the Philippines was the world’s “center of diversity” for beetles.

Dr. Henrick Freitag and and Dr. Michael Balke of the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology Dresden and the Bavarian State Collections of Zoology in Munich described the new specie of the Spider Water Beetles (Ancyronyx) as having “extremely long legs, often accompanied by an eye-catching cross-like elytral color pattern, so that they remind of spiders.”

The discovery was disclosed in a news release posted on October 18 by EurekAlert!, an online global news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world.

According to the two German scientists, the presence of the beetles in undisturbed mountain rivers of Palawan indicated that the river system was in good biological health and strengthened the reputation of Palawan as an important area of biodiversity.

“The new discoveries from the Philippines lead to the assumption that the region is the actual diversity center of the genus. By now, 10 of the 18 described species are known solely from the Philippines, of which most are endemic to the country or even to single islands,” Freitag said in the statement published online.

The new beetle specie was discovered in a research undertaken early last year in cooperation with the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development and the De La Salle University Manila, the EurekAlert! report said.

Aqua Palawana

The activity that led to the discovery of the new beetle was part of the foreign-funded research program Aqua Palawana that had been exploring the unique freshwater biodiversity of the Philippines and the biosphere reserve of Palawan for more than a decade, the report added.

Other new species of plants and animals, particularly a white orchid and a mountain shrew, have been reported in recent years after scientists surveyed portions of the newly proclaimed Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, Palawan’s longest mountain range.
By Redempto D. Anda
Inquirer Southern Luzon


http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/80291/new-species-of-beetle-discovered-in-palawan

50 Years of Cereal Leaf Beetle Management Research

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) — A new, open-access article in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management provides a review of cereal leaf beetle biology, past and present management practices, and current research being conducted.

Cereal leaf beetle, Oulema melanopus L., is an introduced insect pest of small grains first recorded in the United States in the early 1960s. Since its introduction from Europe or Asia into Michigan, cereal leaf beetle has rapidly spread and can now be found in most states. Cereal leaf beetle feeds on numerous species of grasses and is considered a major pest of oats, barley, and wheat.

Although several studies have investigated cereal leaf beetle biology and population dynamics, numerous gaps remain in understanding the mechanisms that influence its spread and distribution, which makes predicting pest outbreaks difficult. Because of the difficulty in predicting when and where pest outbreaks will occur many growers in the southeast apply insecticides on a calendar basis rather than using a threshold-based integrated pest management approach.

A future challenge will be to develop new information and procedures that will encourage growers to reevaluate the way they are approaching spring-time insect control in wheat, and consider adoption of the integrated pest management approach.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111017133806.htm

Keystone XL firm moved endangered beetles before pipeline's approval

TransCanada has already moved endangered burying beetles in anticipation of the US government green-lighting its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Alberta to Texas

A Canadian company that is waiting for a federal permit to build an oil pipeline through the High Plains has used a technicality in U.S. environmental regulations to begin removing an endangered species—the black and orange American burying beetle—from the proposed route.

A spokesman for Alberta-based TransCanada said the company has done nothing wrong. The beetles were removed as part of TransCanada's "commitment to protecting the environment and endangered species along the Keystone XL route," Shawn Howard told InsideClimate News. According to Howard, the beetle is the only endangered species identified along the pipeline's proposed route from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But pipeline opponents say that by moving beetles from the Nebraska sandhills and mowing miles of grass where the insects once lived, TransCanada has illegally begun construction on the project. Because the pipeline would cross an international border, the U.S. State Department is in charge of the permitting process. The agency is expected to make its decision by the end of the year.

On Wednesday three environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Omaha against the State Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the beetle removal work be stopped.
Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the suit was filed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA makes it clear that "when you're in the process of considering a project, you can't do any work before you have a permit," Greenwald said. "By already doing work on the pipeline route, [TransCanada is] essentially bullying the process."

The Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit with Friends of the Earth and the Western Nebraska Resources Council.

Howard said TransCanada hasn't done any construction. "We have moved beetles and mowed some grass to assure the protection of the American Burying Beetle," he said in an email to InsideClimate News. "Mowing – not construction. And before any work was done, we received permission from the landowners to conduct these surveys."

Read on...

Living Species of Aquatic Beetle Found in 20-Million-Year-Old Sediments

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2011) — A study of an Early Miocene fossil from southern Siberia performed by an international team of researchers, from the National Museum in Prague, Voronezh State University and the Museum of Natural History in London, led to the surprising find that the fossil belongs to a species of aquatic beetles which is still alive today and widely distributed in Eurasia.

The study was published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The fossil beetle discovered in the 16-23 million years old sediments of the Irtysh River in southern Siberia belongs to the modern species Helophorus sibiricus, a member of the water scavenger beetles (Hydrophiloidea), which is at present widely distributed in Eurasia and reaches even North America.

The species was originally described in 1860 by the Russian entomologist Victor Motschulsky based on specimens collected at Lake Baikal. It is aquatic and inhabits various kinds of standing waters, predominantly the grassy temporary pools. Larvae are unknown so far, but are supposed to be terrestrial and predaceous, preying on various invertebrates, as in most other species of the genus.
The Siberian fossil provides new data for the long-lasting debate among scientists about the average duration of an insect species. It was originally estimated to be ca. 2-3 million years based on the available fossil record, but slowly accumulating data begin to show that such an estimate is an oversimplification of the problem. Recently, evolutionary trees dated using molecular clocks suggested that some insect species are rather young, originating during the Ice Ages, but others may have been able to survive the last 10-20 million years until today. The long-living species had to survive the massive changes of the Earth's climate during the last millions of years -- how they managed to do so is another question for scientists to address.

A large missing piece for the acceptance of long-living insects as a general phenomenon and for understanding the reasons for survival of the particular species is the scarcity of the fossils of such species. The reasons seem to be rather straightforward -- the majority of the fossils bear too few details to allow a detailed comparison with living species, whose taxonomy is often based on the shape of male genitalia and other details. That is why the fossil discovered by the Czech-Russian-British team is so important: it bears enough details to allow its detailed comparison with the living species. Although the genitalia are not preserved in the fossil, the scientists were lucky that Helophorus beetles bear species-specific granulation on the pronotum which was readily seen on the fossil and allowed its reliable identification.

A life-style associated with an environment which remains stable over time, such as rotten wood, has been suggested as one of the possible ways in which long-living species may have survived from the past. The discovery of a long-living species of an aquatic beetle may indicate that temporary pools in which Helophorus sibiricus is mainly living today may be another example of such a stable environment -- it is really not difficult to imagine that the conditions in a pool created in a modern grassland from the melting snow are very similar to those one would have found in such a pool 20 million years ago.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006094825.htm