Recent expeditions by the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Zoology to the Yunnan Province of China have uncovered the existence of a new species of long-horned beetle. This newly discovered beetle has a beautifully colored blue-green body with short, slender, and distinctively blue legs according to a new article in Zookeys.
There are over 20,000 known species of long-horned beetles. The family, called Cerambycidae, can be distinguished by their extremely long antennae, which tend to be even longer than the beetles’ body. The Cerambycidae family is mostly identified with leaf-litter habitats. Some beetles are considered pests due to the fact that their wood-feeding larvae can cause extreme damage to trees and lumber.
Scientists have given the new species the name Schwarserium yunnanum, which is derived from the location where the species was discovered, the Yunnan Province of China. Yunnan is China’s most biodiverse province. Most of this province lies within either the subtropical highland or humid subtropical zones with mild to warm winters and tempered summers. Its mountainous nature and plenty of precipitation nurture an extremely high level of biodiversity as well as high degrees of endemism, meaning many organisms unique to this specific region.
As a result of this study, the existence of a new subgenus, called Rugosochroma, was also uncovered.
Schwarzerium yunnanum the newly described species: The male beetle is on the left and the female on the right. Photo by Mei-ying Lin.
CITATION: Vives E, Lin M-Y (2013) One new and seven newly recorded Callichromatini species from China (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Cerambycinae). ZooKeys 275: 67–75, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.275.4576
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