New Beetle Species Discovered in Metro Manila
Posted on September 11, 2013
A new beetle has been discovered in metro Manila, the world's 10th largest megacity. Researchers of Ateneo de Manila University discovered the tiny new species of aquatic beetle. It has been named named Hydraena ateneo after the university.
Associate Professor Dr. Hendrik Freitag, author of the research paper, said in a release, "The Long-palped Water Beetles (genus Hydraena) are in fact one of the most overlooked and diverse genera of aquatic beetles. Only 14 species of this genus - all endemic - are known from the country by now, but many more wait to be named and described. All of them display these extremely enlarged palps of the maxilla. These are real mouthpart appendages and not the antennae. Those species that were found in the Ateneo campus must have re-colonized the area after the tree cover has re-established in the last 50 years and the small creeks began to flow again."
The research was published here in the journal, ZooKeys.