Posted on 09/01/2011 7:22:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
An American scientist working with a team of Indonesians scientists has discovered a new giant black warrior wasp species. The wasp will be added to the list of items named after the country’s national symbol, the mythical bird Garuda.
The insect-eating predator was discovered by Lynn S. Kimsey, a professor of entomology and the director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, while working with 12 scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) during an expedition to the Mekongga Mountains of Sulawesi.
Scientists are shocked by the discovery of the insect, with the male wasp measuring approximately two-and-a-half inches long. Its large jaw may play a defensive and reproductive role similar to other wasps.
“Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk,” Kimsey said in a news release. “The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae.”
The three-week expedition was funded by a five-year $4 million grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program to specifically study the fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates of Sulawesi. The team of scientists working from the funding have discovered a bat, two frogs, two lizards, two fish, a land crab and many insects since 2008.
American researchers have been collaborating with three Indonesian partners: the LIPI, the Ministry of Forestry and the Bandung Institute of Techonology. LIPI is the lead organization in Indonesia and UC Davis is the head organization in the United States.
The grant also aims to study and find plants and microbes that may carry medicinal value and energy potential as well as develop and encourage conservation strategies.
Over the course of her career, Kimsey has discovered close to 300 new species. She decided to name her latest discovery after the Indonesian national symbol.
“The first time I saw the wasp I knew it was something really unusual,” Kimsey said. “I’m very familiar with members of the wasp family Crabronidae that it belongs to but had never seen anything like this species of Dalara. We don’t know anything about the biology of these wasps. They are only known from southwestern Sulawesi.”
Much of Sulawesi’s biosphere is considered threatened by logging and mining operations. Kimsey said there are now plans for an open pit nickel mine on the mountain.
“There’s talk of forming a biosphere reserve to preserve this,” she said. “There are so many rare and endangered species on Sulawesi that the world may never see.”
The group of scientists dealt with challenging conditions and survived on provisions of ramen and rice during the expedition.
“Eventually we had to leave because we ran out of food,” Kimsey said. “This part of Sulawesi gets about 400 inches of rain a year. We were told that Sulawesi has a dry and rainy season. But the only difference we could see between the dry and rainy season is that during the dry season, it rains only in the afternoon.”
Despite the challenging conditions, the scientist’s research has paid off.
“I consider Sulawesi one of the world’s top three islands for biodiversity — that along with Australia and Madagascar,” Kimsey said.
This Science-funding Complex is something that Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech. Of course the MSM covered only the Military-Industrial Complex and that’s all school children ever learn about.
“The world needs ditch diggers too.”
But what is doing us in is the Government/Democrat/Government Unions complex...
Well...obviously it’s very complex. ;-]
“Stings” not “shocks”
“There’s talk of forming a biosphere reserve...”
Of course it’s near a proposed new mine. THAT is the agenda. No doubt that was their plan all along. One can probably go into any square mile of the jungle and find some new critter. And they just “happened” to pick one near the mine. Or, perhaps to study things near the mine before it got changed.
Heck - how many time to we find things at some new development that stops the project. Of course, if it weren’t for the new development - they wouldn’t have found it in the first place. (Variation of shoot, shovel and shutup).
And if these wasps are anything like the ones around here, it will take more than a mine to stop them!
Hmmm..... And all this time I thought a Garuda Bird was a Thai symbol
He was a wasp guy then and would make us draw the genitalia of some of his favorite yellow jackets hoping one of us could draw it good enough so he could use it in a paper. That is how you tell wasps apart....by their genitalia. If it looks like it fits then this is a male and that is a female.
It was a crazy time from 1964-1968. There was a rush of people across the quad and they were running to see Bobby Kennedy as he rode in the back of a convertible around the place. About a week later, I was identifying bugs in the lab when Bobby Kennedy was shot, I was walking across the student union when a girl rushed up to me and said that Martin Luther King had been killed.
There is hope. Even though I graduated from UCD, I am a devout member of the TEA PARTY. How’d I manage that?
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