Monday 18 December 2017

Honduranura centraliamericana: A new species of Springtail from Honduras and Costa Rica.

Springtails (Collembola) are wingless Insects (or not, some modern taxonomists classify them as non-Insect Hexapods), considered to be extremely ancient members of the group; unlike wingless Insects such as Ants of Fleas they are thought to have diverged from other Insects before the evolution of wings, not to have secondarily lost them. Springtails are found throughout the world, and are among the first organisms to colonise newly formed islands, though their dispersal methods are not properly understood.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 18 December 2017, José Palacios-Vargas of the Laboratorio de Ecología y Sistemática de Microartrópodos at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, describes a new species of Springtail from Honduras and Costa Rica.

The new species is named Honduranura centraliamericana, where 'Honduranura'  refers to Honduras, where the species was first observed, and 'centraliamericana' refers to Central America, in reference to the species known distribution, in the Central American countries of Honduras and Costa Rica. The species is described from four adult female specimens, one adult male and one juvenile, collected from leaf-litter in tropical forests in Comayagua Department, Honduras, and the Parque Nacional Tapantí in Costa Rica. The specimens range in length from 2.2 to 2.8 mm, and are yellowish in colour with a granular texture.

Honduranura centraliamericana. Palacios-Vargas (2017).

See also...

http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/monecphora-broomfieldi-monecphora.htmlhttp://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-new-genus-of-goblin-spiders-from.html
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-new-species-of-giant-swallowtail.htmlhttp://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/nine-new-species-of-flightless-bess.html
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-new-species-of-damselfly-from-la.htmlhttp://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/insect-dispersal-in-miocene-springtail.html
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