A team of entomologists from the Netherlands and Philippines has discovered three new species of aquatic beetles in the remote Maliau Basin, Malaysian Borneo, and named one of them after American actor and producer Leonardo DiCaprio.
Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi. Scale bar – 1 mm. Image credit: Hendrik Freitag / Taxon Expeditions.
The three newly-discovered species belong to Grouvellinus, a genus of water beetles widely distributed in the Oriental and Palearctic regions.
Named Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, G. andrekuipersi, and G. quest, these are the first records of the genus from the island of Borneo.
These new water beetles were discovered in Maliau Basin during the first field trip initiated by Taxon Expeditions, an organization which arranges scientific surveys for untrained laypeople with the aim to discover previously unknown species and bridge the gap in biodiversity knowledge.
“Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi is named in honor of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to acknowledge his inspiring work in promoting environmental awareness and bringing the problems of climate change and biodiversity loss into the spotlight,” said Taxon Expeditions’ founder Dr. Iva Njunjic and colleagues.
“The species name was selected during a naming ceremony at Maliau Basin Studies Center on October 6, 2017, in which expedition participants as well as a large number of field centre staff and porters took part.”
“Tiny and black, this new beetle may not win any Oscars for charisma, but in biodiversity conservation, every creature counts,” said Dr. Njunjic, an entomologist with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, G. andrekuipersi, and G. quest are described in a paper published April 30, 2018 in the journal ZooKeys.
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H. Freitag et al. 2018. Three new species of Grouvellinus Champion, 1923 from Maliau Basin, Sabah, Borneo, discovered by citizen scientists during the first Taxon Expedition (Insecta, Coleoptera, Elmidae). ZooKeys 754: 1-21; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.754.24276
