Recently in far east of Russia, a new specie of wasp has been discovered. Serguei V. Triapitsyn, lead scientist at University of California, named the new wasp after the college. Ganotocerus ucri is a very small species of wasp, ranging from 1.1 to 1.2 millimeters in length. Although this wasp's exact diet is unknown, several related wasps parasitize upon the eggs of the leaf hopper, a pest to modern agriculture. The wasp was discovered in a study in Primorsky Kray, Russia. Primorsky Kray has little in the means of population and is known for its rich fauna with the wasp family. A trap utilizing alcohol as bait and preservative was used to catch random insect specimens, among them this new one was discovered. Triapitsyn will soon be describing another new parasitic wasp species, this one found in southern California. TOS:
1) Science is collaborative- it took different teams of scientist to conduct the study, by setting traps, checking them, and recovering the results.
2) Role of motivation and curiosity- few people wake up with the urge to go hunting for new species of parasitic wasps, lucky for us, Triapitsyn was one of those people. Without scientists dedicated to things many may not consider, a lot of discoveries waiting to be found and studied may never be acknowledged.
It is mind-blowing to learn that scientists are still discovering new species at this day and age. I know there are billions of creature that are on the Earth, but we have also been around quite a long time. This is a very cool looking wasp, in my opinion, and I am interested to learn what it actually does. It is amazing how researchers, first of all, find these tiny creatures, but then secondly how they figure out what they do and eat. How can you track and study something so small. I hope the scientist can learn everything about this new species of wasp.
ReplyDeleteI find it so interesting to hear that there are so many types of wasps, as Josh said. This is so interesting because this one is only a millimeter long! Thats so small! I would like to know if it had a stinger because that could be scary! I found this website that also referred to the Myramid Wasp as a "fairyfly", it also showed that scientists are already finding out so much!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130506181724.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
Everytime I hear a story like this, I am surprised that there are still undocumented species living on our planet. Biologists have spent the past hundreds of years plotting and classifying the hundreds of thousands of living things we know of. The fact that this has just recently been discovered proves that there is still more to explore and more species to document. I found a similar article about a newly discovered bass species published one day ago. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57583536/florida-scientists-discover-new-bass-species/
ReplyDeleteI love insects, especially beetles, but I hate wasps the most!I agree though with what was said above that it truly is a wonder that we continue to discover new organism on a daily basis through the roles of chance and motivation. If I read this article correctly, this wasp is around 1 millimeter? That's crazy! It goes to show that no matter what size these insects are that a new discovery may not be far away, and the potential to extract a medicine for our benefit is also possible. I researched an article about what was said above and found it mind-blowing that we've only discovered about 20% of all the species of life on Earth.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.mongabay.com/profiles/new_species.html