William Atkins
Thursday, 07 May 2009 18:49
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 3
Check out the scientific paper in Zootaxa entitled “
A new species of Agaporomorphus Zimmermann from Venezuela, and a review of the A. knischi species group (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae: Copelatinae)" (pdf file}.
The paper begins by stating,
“A new species, Agaporomorphus colberti Miller and Wheeler, sp. n., is described from specimens from Departamento Amazonas, Venezuela. The new species belongs to the A. knischi Zimmermann species group based on the common presence of a pair of series of fine setae on the dorsal surface of the male median lobe of the aedeagus.”
To see if the diving beetle and Stephen Colbert look anything alike, check out the
picture of
A. colberti in the ScienceDaily.com article.
When asked about the honor to Colbert, Dr. Wheeler stated,
“Last year, Stephen shamelessly asked the science community to name something cooler than a spider to honor him. His top choices were a giant ant or a laser lion. While those would be cool species to discover, our research involves beetles, and they are 'way cooler' than a spider any day.”
For more information on Stephen Colbert and his new association with the Venezuelan diving beetle, please go to the EurekAlert article “
Entomologists name 'diving beetle' for Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert.”
The two entomologists are trying to draw more attention to the wide diversity of beetles, their chosen field of study.
The Eurekalert article states,
“Taxonomists believe there are roughly 500,000 named species in the scientific order Coleoptera (beetles) and probably three times that many waiting to be discovered – an amount that far exceeds the number of species in any other group of plant or animal.”
ScienceDaily.com states,
“There are about 1.8 million species [of beetle] that have been described since Carolus Linnaeus initiated the modern systems for naming plants and animals in the 18th century. Scientists estimate there are between 2 million and 100 million species on Earth, though most put that number closer to 10 million. Even with some 20,000 new species discovered each year, there are many that will go out of existence before being studied.”
Page three concludes with comments from Drs. Wheeler and Miller.
