Pictures: 101 New Species of Beetles

Trigonopterus Viridescens
Photograph courtesy Alexander Riedel
The Trigonopterus viridescens is among the 101 new species of weevils—flightless beetles in the Curculionoidea superfamily—found in the tropical rainforest of Papua New Guinea. The species is distinguished by its green luster, and its name incorporates the Latin word viridescens, meaning greenish.
While the names of most of the 101 beetles include Latin words that describe their physical features, some were named after the beetles' locality. One got a moniker in honor of the researchers' colleague Katayo Sagata, and another was named for prominent weevil expert Rene Tänzler.
In what is perhaps a first, ten names were chosen at random from the Papua New Guinea telephone book—a way of dedicating the discoveries to local families.
That's not the only new twist. To speed the process of describing all the different species within the hyperdiverse genus Trigonopterus, German entomologists Alexander Riedel of the Natural History Museum Karlsruhe and Michael Balke of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology avoided the naming method traditionally used in taxonomy.
The traditional approach to naming relied only on structural descriptions, and it would have taken the scientists more than a lifetime to name all the beetles, given the many similarities among the insects.
Instead, the researchers sorted the different species by sequencing portions of each beetle's DNA. The results are published in Frontiers of Zoology. They then published a photo of each identified species in an online database called Species ID.
—Linda Poon
Published March 29, 2013
Trigonopterus Echinus
Photograph courtesy Alexander Riedel
The Trigonopterus echinus, characterized by a round shape and short yellow scales resembling spines, got its name from the Latin word for hedgehog.
Traditionally, taxonomists used only morphological, or structural, characteristics to describe each species. This method can prove problematic when distinguishing among a large number of species that closely resemble one another.
Advanced technology allows scientists to record the DNA sequence of every beetle, improving their ability to accurately and efficiently size up closely related species. Rather than examining the various morphological traits of each beetle, entomologists can quickly check different DNA sequences through BLAST, a search tool for comparing molecular data.
"It is quite easy to identify species that are identical or closely related to the ones at hand," Riedel said, adding that the new method also enables researchers to keep descriptions of morphological characteristics brief and concise.
Published March 29, 2013
Trigonopterus Apicalis
Photograph courtesy Alexander Riedel
The contrasting colors of the Trigonopterus apicalis distinguish it from other species of beetles. While this species is mostly black, its antennae and the lower half of its forewings are orange.
The new approach to naming will not only save time but also aid studies in other fields like ecology and conservation biology, which rely on species identification to determine the biodiversity of different habitats. Many studies do not discuss the diversity among insects because identifying the different species using traditional taxonomy methods is difficult, Riedel said.
Published March 29, 2013
Finding the Perfect Name
Photograph courtesy Alexander Riedel
Researchers named the Trigonopterus angalus using the Latin word for angles—a reference to the beetle's hexagonal, egg-shaped body.
Naming a large number of closely related species within the same genus gets tricky when suitable names, such as minutus to indicate small size and ovatus to describe an egg-shaped body, have already been used.
"What remains is using localities or [a person's] name," Riedel said.
While some researchers have named species after celebrities like Beyoncé or President Barack Obama, Riedel and Balke used common family surnames in the Papua New Guinea phone book to name some of their newfound beetles.
"The species names will still be in use in a hundred years, and I doubt that [the celebrity] names will still have meaning then," Riedel said. "I feel that the species of a certain area should be related to the local people."
And, of course, the phone book is a good source for a seemingly endless list of potential names.
Published March 29, 2013
Photographing the Details
Photographs courtesy Alexander Riedel
From afar, the new weevil species look fairly similar (60 are pictured above). But closer examination of high-resolution photos taken of the individual species in Riedel and Balke's study reveal that each has its own patterns, colors, and shape.
According to Riedel, in the early days of taxonomy no illustrations were used in the study of new species. It wasn't until the last 10 to 20 years that fairly good photos were provided alongside the descriptions.
When additional beetle specimens came along and scientists had to determine which ones had already been identified, the descriptions alone were not sufficient. This meant that researchers often had to travel from museum to museum to find specimens in collections when they wanted to compare species side by side—an exhausting and time-consuming task.
Published March 29, 2013
Cyclops Mountains
Photograph courtesy Alexander Riedel
Many of the new species were found in Papua New Guinea's Cyclops Mountains, which are threatened by illegal logging and forest fires on the lower slopes and by the pollution from nearby cities.
The highest peak in the relatively small mountain range is only a little more than a mile high (2,158 meters). According to Riedel, since 2002 destruction from illegal logging and fires has reached half a mile (800 meters) up the mountain. As a result, the region's beetles, most of whom are endangered, are restricted to small patches of undisturbed forest.
Published March 29, 2013

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2 comments

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Bill Cornelius

There was some discussion on butterfly websites of giving species names in the form of the geographic location of the holotype, for example Colias W120.38.01-N33.31.55. Kind of hard to remember but very accurate, and always unique.

Alex Baum

While this is all extremely interesting, it is pretty disappointing that National Geographic did not get its basic facts straight before publishing it. The Cyclops Mountains are in Indonesian New Guinea (West Papua) not Papua New Guinea. The location of these mountains is extremely close to the border of the two countries, but nevertheless, the mountain range is in Indonesia. Some might consider it trivial, but they got the wrong country. Not very impressive on their part. The research, however, is fascinating and my hat is off to the folks working on this stuff. This is how we save one of the last true wildernesses of the world - sound research that provides a reason to conserve an area.

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