Scientists in Germany have confirmed the discovery of a new insect order,the first time this has happened for 87 years. Dick Ahlstrom reports
A 45-million-year-old fossil has come to life and inhabits a mountain chain in Namibia. The carnivorous insect carries all the hallmarks of a tough predator and appropriately goes by the nickname, Gladiator, chosen because of its similarity to the armoured combatants in the film.
A research expedition to Brandberg Mountain in Namibia found living examples of the insect which previously had only been known to exist in ancient lumps of amber. Entomologists, the scientists who study insects, are describing the find as akin to locating a living woolly mammoth or sabre-toothed tiger in the backwoods of Killarney National Park.
How scientists made the discovery is detailed in a recent edition of the journal, Science. New insect species are found and categorised every year, but finding a new insect family or order, further up the classification tables used by biological scientists, is a rare event.
A biologist and doctoral student in the Tropical Ecology Working Group at the Max Planck Institute for Limnology in Plön, Oliver Zompro, spotted the Gladiator last year in a 45-million-year-old piece of Baltic amber. The bugs he examined were so very different that they could not be allocated to any known insect order.
They appeared to be a mix between a stick insect and a preying mantis. He checked other amber collections and found more examples of these insects, in the process identifying a new family of stick insect.
On a subsequent visit to the British Natural History Museum in London, Zompro was shown a spiny insect that had been collected in 1950 in Tanzania and sent to London 16 years earlier by the Museum in Lund, Sweden to be identified. Yet another example was found in amber, held in a private collection. Then more unidentified stick-insect material was found stored in jars of alcohol in the Berlin Museum for Natural History.
All of these finds, some dated from millions of years to just a few decades old, proved that a new insect order had been discovered, the first since Zoraptera in 1913 and Grylloblattodea in 1915. The new order was given the tongue-twister name, Mantophasmatodea bringing to 31 the number of insect orders known throughout the world.
The insects held in Berlin yielded some idea of the lifestyle of the Gladiator. Its stomach contained the remains of other insects, testifying to its status as a predator. Rows of spines on the front and middle legs indicated that the animal held on to its prey with its legs while munching away, as do some insect-eating locusts.
The modern samples showed however that the insect was still probably alive and kicking somewhere in Africa and an expedition was launched to find it.
The Namibian National Museum in Windhoek and the Max Planck signed a research co-operation agreement in January of this year opening the way for an expedition that took place from February 28th to March 19th. Appropriately Oliver Zompro was a member of this team with other entomologists from Germany, England, South Africa, Namibia and the US.
They headed for the 2,600 metre high Brandberg in Erongo province which had long been famous for its unique animal species. The team found living examples of the Gladiator not only on the Brandberg but also in the nearby Erongo mountains.
It turned out that scientists from the University of Leeds and the Windhoek Museum had already found dead specimens of this insect on the Brandberg during joint expeditions between 1998 and 2000.
The living Gladiators collected around Brandberg are now in the climate chambers of the Max Planck Institute and DNA analysis is underway to clarify where exactly the Mantophasmatodea order should be placed on the insect family tree.