32 New Beetle Species Identified from New Brunswick, Canada

Entomology Today March 28, 2016 Leave a Comment

Atheta alphacrenuliventris and Acrotona brachyoptera, two new beetle species that were recently described.

In 1991, 1,365 beetle species were known from New Brunswick. That number increased to 2,703 by 2013, but there were still gaps in the knowledge of the coleopteran fauna.

Now a group of insect specialists have joined forces in the name of their love for beetles, and have compiled their findings from the last three years, reporting another 303 species for New Brunswick, including 32 species that are new to science. As a result, the beetle fauna of New Brunswick currently comprises 3,062 species.

All of these records are published in a special issue of Zookeys, titled “The Coleoptera of New Brunswick and Canada: Providing baseline biodiversity and natural history data.”

“This information constitutes a baseline of biological knowledge that is critical to support other branches of science,” according to the authors. “It is important to remind ourselves that the understanding of biological diversity is not possible without taxonomic research, which is thought by many to be the foundation of biological science. Data on the mega-diversity of life and knowledge on species identity and distribution require discovery, description, cataloging, and organization in order to be made accessible to a wide audience.”