Punk beetle's chance discovery in Lamington National Park almost disregarded as bird poo
University of Queensland researcher James Tweed stumbled upon a new species of longhorn beetle while camping in Lamington National Park in Queensland's Gold Coast hinterland.
Transcript
00:00 Yeah, I was camping up there between Christmas and New Year's with my partner and walking
00:06 through the campsite one morning and happened to notice something unusual sitting on a leaf
00:11 near my tent and it turned out to be this rather striking beetle.
00:15 So what did you think when you first saw it?
00:18 What drew your attention to it?
00:21 It's such a striking color.
00:24 White is not a color that's often associated with a lot of insects.
00:31 Very long hairs and the red and black body, it was pretty unique.
00:35 It's a strange looking thing, isn't it?
00:37 How did you try and find out what it was?
00:40 It was a matter of coming back and looking through a lot of scientific papers and textbooks
00:45 and contacting a few experts and colleagues of mine to really figure out whether it was
00:49 something new or not.
00:51 And it didn't take too long to find out it was.
00:55 So it's not just a new species, is it?
00:58 It's a new genus or group?
01:00 Yeah, yeah, so a new genus.
01:03 So a genus is a group of closely related species.
01:08 So in this case, we think as far as we can tell, there's no other species that are especially
01:13 closely related to it.
01:14 So we've put it in its own genus.
01:16 Wow, and who came up with the name Punk Beetle?
01:18 It's a very good name.
01:21 I think that name might have come from a few of the journalists.
01:24 It's not one that I've given it.
01:26 It's pretty apt.
01:27 But were you hoping that it might be named after you?
01:32 No, I think I'm pretty happy just to have been involved in the naming process.
01:38 But yeah, I'm sure there'll be lots of interesting common names that come up for this one.
01:42 And have you been back to look for more of the Punk Beetles in the spot where you first
01:46 found it?
01:47 Yeah, yeah, I've been back up several times.
01:50 And I haven't managed to find any.
01:53 And Binnaburra where it was found has been popular with entomologists for the last 100
01:57 or more years.
01:59 So it's really surprising that this thing seems to have avoided attention for so long.
02:03 But hopefully someone can track some more down one day.
02:06 I guess we don't know too much about it, do we?
02:09 What's behind the bright colours?
02:10 Why all the hair?
02:12 Yeah, absolutely.
02:13 I mean, it's the only one that's been found so far.
02:18 Until more are found, we're going to struggle to answer those questions.
02:20 But we think that the hairs are helping to camouflage it as an insect that's being killed
02:24 by a fungus.
02:25 There's a lot of fungi out there that reproduce by infecting insects.
02:31 And then the fruiting body looks much like the hairs do on this one.
02:35 So maybe it's a good way of tricking birds and other predators and avoiding being eaten
02:41 by them.
02:42 It's quite inspiring to think that there are these new species out there just waiting to
02:46 be discovered, James, isn't it?
02:49 Absolutely.
02:50 I think a lot of people would be surprised.
02:52 The estimates that we have for global insects is that about 1.1 million species have been
02:57 named and the best estimate for the total number of species is about 5.5 million.
03:01 So we're probably only around one fifth of the way to giving all the insects a name.
03:07 Most of the ones still to be discovered probably aren't as striking as this one.
03:10 But it's another step on the way there.
03:14 James Tweed, congratulations.
03:17 Thanks so much.
03:18 Thank you very much.
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