An international group of entomologists led by Dr Marco Bologna from the University Roma Tre, Italy, has described a new species in the beetle genus Hycleus.
Hycleus marcipoli, male, in dorsal view. Image credit: Pan Z et al.
Members of the genus Hycleus belong to the family Meloidae, commonly known as blister beetles.
These beetles get their unpleasant name from their defensive mechanism which includes secretion of a blistering agent, cantharidin.
They can be found throughout the world, in North America they are especially abundant in arid and semiarid areas.
The newly-discovered species of blister beetle, named Hycleus marcipoli, is distributed in China, Laos, and northern Thailand.
“The new species is named after Marco Polo (1254–1324), the Venetian explorer who, during a long period of permanence in China in the late XIII century (1271–1284), established the first well documented relationships between the Chinese and European worlds and opened western culture to the wide and rich Chinese heritage,” Dr Bologna and his colleagues wrote in a paper published in the journal ZooKeys.
Hycleus marcipoli is a small beetle with adults measuring 26 to 38 mm in length.
“We were extremely happy to discover a new species during our studies of the Chinese species of the genus Hycleus,” Dr Bologna said.
“We were wondering for a while how to name it until we came up with the idea to name it after Marco Polo, a historical figure which represents the beginning of collaboration between China and the West.”
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Pan Z et al. 2014. A new Eastern Asian Hycleus and key to the Chinese species of the phaleratus group (Coleoptera, Meloidae, Mylabrini). ZooKeys 463: 11-19; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.463.8261
