Christian Deshott and his children Carla and Chris. (Photo provided)
Christian Deshot, a PhD student at the University of Pretoria, has spent the past 20 years traveling across southern Africa on field trips in search of dung beetles.
But it was during one of his regular walks along a familiar gravel farm road near his home that he encountered a new species.
“I’m very lucky,” he said. “I have over 20 years of experience, so you start learning where to look and what to look for. I just walk up, see a beetle, pick it up and watch it until I get home. I held it carefully in my fingers and looked at it under the microscope. It was really cool and unexpected.”
This is just one of two new species recently described by Deschot, who has discovered and described more than 50 species of dung beetle.
News about a species named Hatronthophagus spinosait was announced that he was discovered during a walk. zoo animalsa scientific magazine dedicated to the latest information on new species discoveries.
Deshot and his doctoral supervisor, Catherine Saul of the Department of Zoology and Entomology, classified the species into a new genus. Hatron Sofags.
Deshott lives near Hartbeesport Dam, about 30 kilometers from the university's Hatfield campus. After my morning research activities, I like to take a walk to stretch my legs before picking up my children from elementary school.
Last January, he went out to pick up his children. It rained the day before.
About 500 meters into his walk, he spotted a small chocolate-colored dung beetle, less than 5mm, among a swarm of common bellicose ants.
After taking a quick look at it under the microscope, Deshot realized that it was a female of a species he had never seen before. He named it after Hathor, an ancient Egyptian god associated with joy, love, women, fertility, and maternal care.
“She was often depicted as a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns,” Deshot said. “It reminded me of a cow's long horns.” Hatronthophagus spinosa”
Despite setting lures baited with cow dung and conducting extensive searches of ant nests around Hartbeesport, Deshot has been unable to track down any further specimens since then. He suspects that this particular species of dung beetle lives in ant nests, providing a mutually beneficial service to its fellow insects.
“The nest may have been flooded, no one knows what happened, but the nest was out and there with the ants. Their ecology is unknown at best. .”
Other dung beetles with eight-segmented antennae include: Hatronthophagus spinosahas such a relationship with ants. DeShort says more research needs to be done to confirm this hypothesis.
“We hope that news of this discovery will encourage other experts working in southern Africa to more intensively investigate the relatively unknown relationship between ants and dung beetles.” said.
There are approximately 500 species of dung beetles in South Africa and more than 700 species in Southern Africa. This diversity is also a result of the diversity of geography and the range of vegetation types, from fynbos and succulents to bushes and savannahs.
Many species of dung beetles are specific to the type of dung they use. For example, some people only use elephant or rhino dung.
For his Ph.D., Deshot is studying a flightless genus found in the arid regions of Namibia and western South Africa that interacts only with hyrax (dassie) dung pellets.
It is also a misconception that dung beetles only eat feces. Some species scavenge for dead frogs and chicken livers, and feed on various types of mushrooms.
In his latest paper, published in zoo animalsDeschodt described yet another new species. Onthophagus Pragtig They will probably only eat the internal organs of dead millipedes. It is one of 20 species in the small group of dung beetles. Onsophagus.
All other species in this group are known to prefer the soft internal organs (or entrails) of millipedes.
“These beetles are small, about the width of a millipede in cross-section,” Deshot said.
“One by one, they find their way into the millipede carcass by finding crevices in the body. I've seen individuals sitting tightly packed inside the carcass, like a string of black pearls. Scrape off the soft edible tissues and form them into small balls to eat later. Onthophagus Pragtig Make a ball out of the dead millipede's innards and bury it directly below the millipede carcass.
“It's already unique for dung beetles to form spheres to reproduce their offspring from something other than feces, but forming spheres from millipede internal organs is quite extraordinary.”
Millipedes' bodies contain hydrogen cyanide, hydrochloric acid, hydroquinone, benzoquinone, alkaloids, and phenols.
The colors of this species range from black, brown, and orange to shiny copper hues. Some are metallic blue, green, or red, while others have colored spots or patterns. The copper-like red metallic luster is Onthophagus Pragtig “It's especially beautiful, like a jewel.”
“The adjective 'pragtig' means 'great' in Afrikaans. It connects this species with other closely related species within the same group. Onthophagus splendidus and Onthophagus splendinoides. They all seem to prefer sandy soil. ”
example Onthophagus Pragtig It has been collected in Limpopo and the Northern Cape and is described from specimens that are part of the collections held at the University and the Ditsong Natural History Museum in Pretoria.
The first known specimen was Onthophagus Pragtig These were collected by Deshott's mentor, Clark Scholz, who worked for many years in the university's zoology and entomology departments before retiring. In the early 2000s, Deshot was part of Scholz's research team that investigated the effects of livestock immersion on dung beetle diversity.
He said it is difficult to study species such as: Onthophagus Pragtig They have no specific relationship with feces as they are not attracted to fecal food.
Deshot emphasized the importance of protecting dung beetles. “If there were no dung beetles on Earth, we would be knee-deep in poop within a year. This is literally what happens when we ignore dung beetles. must be taken care of.
“We need to start looking at these things and figuring out what's going on. There are so many intricate nests between these animals, and we need to look at all these nests. If you disturb or break any important connections, chaos will ensue.”
The idea behind all the activity around dung beetles is to get the message across that people are becoming interested in dung beetles. “Everyone thinks dung beetles just eat poop. There's a lot more to them than poop.”
Deshot may be about to make yet another discovery. “It was a rainy day yesterday, so I was driving the kids to school, and when I opened the gate and went outside, I saw another beetle that may or may not have been described. We don't know what it is, but we'll see if it's new.”
