A Benefit of Collecting

[Ron Gatrelle]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stan Gorodenski" <stanlep at extremezone.com>
To: <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 1:30 PM
Subject: A Benefit of Collecting


> I was reading in the recent issue of Science (April 19, Vol 296, No
> 5567, p. 445) that a new Order of insect has been discovered from
> collected material in museums - London's Natural History Museum and the
> Berlin Natural History Museum. The insect is also in amber 45 million
> years old. The new insect Order is called Mantophasmatodea because of
> certain resemblances to mantids and phasmids.
>
> Had it not been for collectors, this Order could easily have been lost
> through anthropogenic habitat destruction.
> Stan
>

And the rest of the story is that what got this started was an odd specimen
or two collected recently in Africa.  This led to museum searches spoken of
above.  Then an expedition was sent to Africa (eastern area if I recall
correctly) where a collecting trip turned up live individuals which were
taken back to Germany for life history work.  _ they are cannibalistic,
learned in transit.  Now this is a new _ORDER_.  Here we are in 2002
finding new Orders - so there are many undocumented genera, thousands of
species and tens of thousands of unknown, undocumented and unprotected
subspecies in this world - including the eastern US.

Two years ago Frank Rutkowski mailed me some Xeroxed articles of new
_species_ of plants found in the heavily populated areas of California.  I
think one new wildflower was discovered along an interstate Hwy, in Los
Angles!

Ron



 
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