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Beetles

If you were to take one representative of every species of plant and animal on Earth and arrange them in a line, every fifth organism would be a beetle. The staggering diversity of Coleoptera, the order that encompasses beetles, presents entomologists with a potentially onerous task: naming the unending flow of newly discovered species.

How do beetle specialists respond to this challenge? Playfully. Terry Erwin at the National Museum of Natural History studies tree-dwelling beetles in the genus Agra that live in the forest canopy of South America. One shiny black species is only found in the dwindling habitat of the tropical lowlands of southwestern Brazil. Due to extensive forest destruction in this area, Erwin named the species A. calamitas, borrowing the Latin root calamit, meaning misfortune or disaster.

A beautiful metallic green Peruvian species with red and black coloration was named Agra vation. A meddlesome beetle with squirting poison glands? No, Erwin says, there’s nothing aggravating about A. vation. Other beetles have been graced with names such as Agra cadabra, A. phobia, and A. eponine (after the street urchin in Les Miserables).

For more examples of serious scientists concocting tongue-in-cheek nomenclature, visit link toCuriosities of Biological Nomenclature.

More information:

—Tim Stoddard

ZooGoer 28(5) 1999. Copyright 1999 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.

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