Island endemic - Page 4 of 6

Replica of Delcourt's giant gecko or Kawekaweau gecko from the Lille Natural History Museum in France. (© Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Lille, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

26. May 2024 Doreen Fräßdorf

Delcourt’s Giant Gecko

The largest gecko in the world … In the early 1980s, French museum employee Alain Delcourt discovered a forgotten specimen of a single stuffed giant gecko in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Marseille, which had previously been on public display for years. This species was previously unknown

Buschmoa-Genom rekonstruiert (Anomaloptery didiformis)

The bush moa is the smallest moa species known to date. It was only slightly larger than today’s turkeys and weighed around 30 kilograms. The flightless bird went extinct about 500 to 600 years ago with the settlement of New Zealand. (© Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

25. May 2024 Doreen Fräßdorf

Deciphered Bush Moa genome provides insights into New Zealand’s extinct avian world

A team of evolutionary biologists has reconstructed the nearly complete genome of the bush moa (Anomalopteryx didiformis), a flightless bird from New Zealand that went extinct 500 to 600 years ago. Researchers from Harvard University, East Carolina University, Osaka University, and the University of Toronto sequenced ancient DNA from a

The newly discovered scarab beetle species Semanopterus kingstoni was named after entomologist Tim Kingston, who had collected the only known specimen in 1979. (© Reid, Chris & TEES, NATALIE. (2023). A new, but possibly extinct, species of Semanopterus Hope, 1847 from Lord Howe Island, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae). Zootaxa. 5306. 563-570. 10.11646/zootaxa.5306.5.4.)

5. December 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

New beetle species with unique trait discovered on island

Australian researchers recently discovered a previously unknown species of scarab beetle (Scarabaeidae) in the insect collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney. The specimen in question, a female, was collected on January 30, 1979 on Lord Howe, a small island of only 14 square kilometers in the southwest Pacific. The

The extinct tree snail Achatinella apexfulva (top) at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. The species epithet apexfulva means “yellow tip” and refers to the color of the shell. (© Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

29. April 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Yellow-tipped Oahu tree snail

Hawaii’s first scientifically described snail The yellow-tipped Oahu tree snail (Achatinella apexfulva) is not only the first scientifically described snail of the Hawaiian archipelago but also the first officially declared extinct. The species was first described in 1789 by British sailor and explorer George Dixon, who acquired a traditional necklace

Reptiles endemic to Christmas Island: Lister's gecko (left), Christmas Island forest skink (center), and Christmas Island blue-tailed skink (right). While the Christmas Island forest skink has been completely extinct since 2014, the other two species are extinct in the wild and survive only thanks to captive breeding programs. (© Biodiversity Heritage Library, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

26. April 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Christmas Island forest skink

Another loss for Australia’s fauna The Christmas Island forest skink is, alongside the Christmas Island pipistrelle (2009) and the Bramble Cay melomys (between 2009 and 2011), among the most recent losses suffered by Australia’s wildlife. The last known Christmas Island forest skink was named Gump—a female that died in human

While the head resembles that of a pigeon, the body of the pheasant pigeon resembles a pheasant. Generally, four subspecies are distinguished, which differ from the nominate form by their nape patch. The black-naped pheasant pigeon has a black nape patch. (© John Gerrard Keulemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

18. November 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Not sighted for 140 years: Black-naped pheasant pigeon rediscovered

As Pat Leonard from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reported yesterday, a team of scientists during an expedition to Papua New Guinea in September of this year rediscovered the black-naped pheasant pigeon (Otidiphaps insularis or Otidiphaps nobilis insularis), which had not been sighted for 140 years. The researchers captured the

The Lord Howe Island cockroach (pictured), last observed in the 1930s, has now been rediscovered. (© Friendbuddypalchamp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

4. October 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Lord Howe Island cockroach rediscovered

The Lord Howe Island cockroach Panesthia lata, endemic to the Australian Pacific island of Lord Howe and not seen since the 1930s, was rediscovered in July 2022 when biologist Maxim Adams of the University of Sydney and his team visited the island. As the magazine Spektrum recently reported, they found

The back of the scarab beetle E. giganteus was completely black, red-brown at the sides, with yellow hairs and brownish mouthparts, feet and antennae. (© Rossini M, Vaz-de-Mello FZ, Montreuil O, Porch N, Tarasov S (2021) <a href="https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1061.70130" target="blank"Extinct before discovered? Epactoides giganteus sp. nov. (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Scarabaeinae), the first native dung beetle to Réunion island. ZooKeys 1061: 75-86.)

1. July 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Epactoides giganteus (scarab beetle)

First extinct, then discovered: the scarab beetle Epactoides giganteus In 1817, the French botanist Nicolas Bréon found himself on Réunion, part of the Mascarene island group, which he would not leave again until 1833 due to health problems. During his time there he was director of the botanical garden Jardin

The only known specimen of Ridley's stick insect is now housed in the Natural History Museum in London. (© Paul Brock's photos, copyright Natural History Museum, London., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

30. May 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Ridley’s Stick Insect

About walking leaves and walking sticks Insects that strongly resemble leaves or twigs in appearance are called walking leaves or walking sticks, stick insects, ghost insects or phasmids. Stick insects are considered the longest insects on Earth. The body length of some Southeast Asian species can exceed half a meter

The nocturnal Maclear's rat was fairly large, with a body length of 21 to 26 centimeters and a tail length of up to 26.5 centimeters. The species was characterized by its black upright back hairs. (© Joseph Smit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

24. April 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Maclear’s rat

On the vulnerability of rats The extinction of countless birds, mammals, and reptiles in modern times can be traced back to rats that arrived on European ships and expanded their range. In fact, however, there are also many species from the family of true mice and rats (Muridae) that have