James Tweed, a researcher and PhD candidate on the College of Queensland’s Faculty of the Surroundings, was tenting close to Lamington Nationwide Park close to Queensland, Australia, when he noticed one thing that regarded like hen poop. It wasn’t hen poop, although, it was a fuzzy beetle. And it wasn’t simply any fuzzy beetle; it was a new species.
Tweed informed UQ (College of Queensland) Information that when he realized what he was seeing on a leaf was a beetle, he thought it was “probably the most extraordinary and fluffiest longhorn beetle I had ever seen.”
He stated the beetle measured lower than half an inch (9.7 millimeters) and described it as “a putting crimson and black magnificence coated in lengthy white hairs.”
After coming back from his tenting journey, Tweed consulted with specialists in an effort to determine the fuzzy beetle, however nobody might.
Working with entomologists on the Australian Nationwide Insect Assortment (ANIC), Tweed in contrast his fuzzy beetle to ANIC’s massive assortment of specimens and got here to conclusion that the beetle was not solely a brand new species but in addition a brand new genus.
The brand new beetle’s scientific title is Excastra albopilosa, which roughly interprets to “white and furry [beetle] from the camp.”
The species is formally described in a examine revealed final month within the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.
