Newly Discovered Insect Looks Like Mothman

Researchers in western Uganda discovered a brand new species of leafhopper insect, the first sighting of any animal from its genus seen since 1969. The red-eyed, metallic-looking animal resembles the legendary Mothman and is almost as uncommon.

Leafhoppers are widespread bugs which are considered destructive pests on account of their love of crops. But Phlogis, the genus that the not too long ago found critter belongs to, is awfully uncommon, with the final confirmed sighting going down within the Central African Republic half a century in the past. The new species’ discovery was reported this month in Zootaxa.

“Leafhoppers of this genus, and the wider tribe, are very unusual in appearance, and are rarely found,” mentioned Alvin Helden, an entomologist at Anglia Ruskin University within the UK and the lead writer of the brand new paper, in a college release. “In fact, they are so incredibly rare that their biology remains almost completely unknown, and we know almost nothing about Phlogis kibalensis, the new species.”

P. kibalensis is called for Kibale National Park, the place the insect was discovered by a staff of scholar entomologists led by Helden. The animal is only a quarter-inch lengthy and has six spindly legs and a reflective silver physique with reddish-brown wings. Its eyes are shiny purple, and, like different male leafhoppers, it has leaf-shaped genitalia.

Helden added that we nonetheless don’t know what P. kibalensis eats or its ecological area of interest. Leafhoppers are carefully associated to cicadas, although, and it’s seemingly that the brand new species feeds on plant sap as different leafhoppers do. They are eaten by birds and different invertebrates like spiders, beetles, and wasps, which Helden has been surveying within the Ugandan wildlife park since 2015.

“Outside national parks and reserves, the amount of rainforest that has been cleared in the tropics is devastating,” he mentioned. “Rare species could be living anywhere, but deforestation means it is inevitable that we will be losing species before we have discovered them.”

Indeed, African wildlife parks harbor fauna huge and small which are little recognized to scientists. Last yr, a Walker’s duiker—a species of antelope by no means earlier than imaged alive within the wild—was caught on path cameras in Togo.

Of course, an insect as small as P. kibalensis can’t simply be noticed by path cameras, making boots-on-the-ground documentation an important technique of analysis. Environmental DNA has turn into a extra dependable methodology of discovering elusive species lately, so extra bugs might but enter our vocabulary.

More: 7 ‘Extinct’ Species That Eventually Reappeared