Tuesday 17 February 2015

A new species of Weevil from Jiangsu Province, China.

Weevils of the genus Orthotemnus were originally described from New Guinea, and have subsequently been recorded from Australia, the Seychelles, tropical Africa and the Russian Far East.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 19 January 2015, Youssef Mohamed Omar of the Faculty of Agriculture at Assiut University and the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Runzhi Zhang of the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Steven Davis of the Division ofEntomology at the Natural History Museum and Department of Ecology &Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas describe a new species of Orthotemnus from Jiangsu Province in China.

The new species is named Orthotemnus longitarsus, meaning ‘long tarsus’. The species is named from four male and four female specimens, all collected from under trees in a park in Zijingshan. The males are 3.29-3.40 mm in length, the females 2.58-2.80 mm. All are reddish brown in colour.

(Top) Female specimen of Orthotemnus longitarsus in lateral view. (Bottom) SEM image of male specimen of Orthotemnus longitarsus in lateral view. Omar et al. (2015).

See also…

http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-pine-cone-weevil-from-cretaceous.htmlA Pine Cone Weevil from Cretaceous Burmese amber.                                                      Pine Cone Weevils (Nemonychidae) are thought likely to be the oldest group of surviving Weevils (Curculionoidea), making their understanding their evolution important for our understanding of Weevils...

Straight Snouted Weevils (Brentidae) are wood-eating Beetles related to the True Weevils, found in temperate and tropical regions across the globe, though they are most diverse and numerous in the tropics. The classification of the group has changed dramatically a number of times in the last 20 years, and appears likely to change again.



Palm Weevils of the genus Anchylorhynchus are found from Panama to Argentina. They have a symbiotic relationship with Palms of the genera Butia, Cocos, Oenocarpus and Syagrus, with the adults acting...
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.