Sunday, May 11, 2014

24 new Mummy-Making Wasps in Ecuador




"Some Ecuadorian tribes were famous for making mummified shrunken heads from the remains of their conquered foes. Field work in the cloud forests of Ecuador by Professor Scott Shaw, University of Wyoming, Laramie, and colleagues, has resulted in the discovery of 24 new species of Aleiodes wasps that mummify caterpillars. The research by Eduardo Shimbori, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil, and Scott Shaw, was recently published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Among the 24 new insect species described by Shimbori and Shaw, several were named after famous people including the comedians and television hosts Jimmy Fallon, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Ellen DeGeneres, as well as the Ecuadorian artist Eduardo Kingman, American poet Robert Frost, and Colombian singer and musician, Shakira."
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113143199/new-species-of-mummy-making-wasps-in-ecuador-051014/#AK5VGF0LBShfcwp4.99


I found this interesting because of the rate at which people can discover and classify new insects!

Allana Williams


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