Aussie predatory species discovered inside package: ‘How is that possible?’

Townsville: So, get this! A leading insect expert in Germany reached out to Australia, asking if they had any unidentified insect specimens. Museums often have tons of these hidden gems, so the Queensland Museum was happy to send some over.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Australia is home to at least 200,000 insect species, but only about 62,000 have been named. That’s a lot of critters still waiting for their moment in the spotlight!

The expert, Tobias Mainda from the University of Greifswald, was super excited when his package arrived. He’s been a fan of Australian wildlife since he was a kid, thanks to shows like Crocodile Hunter. Who wouldn’t be, right?

While trekking in India, he got the news about the package. He’s on a mission to see these tiny predators, called Megalopinus, in the wild for the first time. He hasn’t spotted one alive yet, but he’s hopeful.

These little guys look like they belong in a sci-fi movie, with huge eyes and short antennae. They usually hang out in decaying logs covered in fungi. Mainda is all about discovering new species, saying it shows just how diverse our planet really is.

Inside the package were specimens collected back in the 1980s by a late Aussie entomologist. While most of the insects were known, two caught Mainda’s eye. They looked different from the four known Megalopinus species in Australia.

He was shocked to find that the closest relative of these new specimens is from Sulawesi, Indonesia. “How is that possible?” he wondered. It’s wild to think about the connections between species across such distances!

Mainda believes there are likely many more undiscovered species out there, which could help us understand Australia’s biodiversity even better. The findings were published in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy, co-authored by Mainda and his colleagues.