FOR RELEASE: Jan. 8, 1996
Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
Office: (607) 255-3290
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: Larry Bernard 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Sitting patiently in museum insect collections for at least
85 years, this Ithaca bog beetle waited to be discovered. Now, thanks to
Cornell University entomologists, not only has it been 'discovered,' but
this bog beetle now has an official name: Platynus indecentis.
In August 1995, Kipling W. Will, a graduate student in entomology from
Columbus, Ohio, and James K. Liebherr, Cornell professor of entomology and
curator of the Cornell insect collection, were working through the
university's insect collection when they stumbled upon a species that
looked familiar but which they could not immediately identify. "Kip and I
were sorting through the Cornell insect collection and I made a species
identification key and he was testing the key on a variety of specimens,"
Liebherr said. "Kip found that one of the specimens just didn't fit the
key. We suspected we had something new. This species had somehow remained
mixed into the Cornell collection along with another extremely common
beetle species that's been known to science since 1823."
Through careful anatomical comparisons with known species from North
America, Europe and Asia, assisted by colleagues Smithsonian Institute in
Washington and the Natural History Museum in Paris, the entomologists
determined that this species, which can be found in many institutional
insect collections throughout the Northeast, had never been given proper
scientific identification. The half-inch long predator, a natural resident
of the Ithaca area, had eluded entomologists' detection for decades.
It is no longer incognito. The Coleopterists Bulletin (Dec. 30, 1996)
published the official name of the new species and genus. Other
entomologists can use the accompanying key to identify this new species
within their collections. The article was authored by Leibherr and Will.
A member of the ground beetle family, Platynus indecentis now joins more
than 2,600 other beetles species found in North America, north of Mexico,
including 60 introduced from other parts of the world.
Through study of specimens from museums in the northeastern United States
and Canada, Will and Liebherr have found that this beetle's natural range
extends from Maine to Ohio and Ontario to Maryland. The earliest collected
specimen found so far belongs to the American Museum of Natural History in
New York City, which was found at Palisades on Hudson, N.Y., on April 2,
1907. The collector was not noted on the specimen label. There are also
specimens from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass., and those are labeled only "Massachusetts" and
"Pennsylvania." Liebherr suspects the Harvard specimens may be older than
1907.
This beetle loves bogs. "It lives in habitats that people don't usually
get to," Liebherr said. "New York state and the surrounding areas have
these things that are unique to our region, and they are worth protecting.
We've been here in the Northeast for some 300 years, and we still don't
know it all."
The first Platynus indecentis species that Will and Liebherr examined at
Cornell was on found at McLean Bog. Other specimens were found in boggy
areas at Fall Creek, in Tompkins County.
"It just shows the complexity of the systems surrounding us," Liebherr
said. "Sometimes finding these things are serendipitous."
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EDITORS: A drawing of Platynus indecentis is available for download via the
World Wide Web at
http://www.news.cornell.edu/science/jan97/bogbeetle.bpf.html.
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