Huge new wasp discovered in Sulawesi

24/03/2012 23:40:59 Wasp has jaws bigger than its head

August 2011. The new species of wasp, discovered by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, is one of the world's largest wasps.

2.5 inches long
The jaw-dropping, shiny black wasp appears to be the "Komodo dragon" of the wasp family. It's huge. The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. "Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male's front legs. I don't know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae."

Kimsey discovered the warrior wasp on the Mekongga Mountains in south-eastern Sulawesi on a recent biodiversity expedition funded by a five-year grant from the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program.

The insect-eating predator belongs to the genus Dalara and family Crabronidae. "I'm going to name it Garuda, after the national symbol of Indonesia," Kimsey said. Garuda, a powerful mythical warrior that's part human and part eagle, boasts a large wingspan, martial prowess and breakneck speed.

"The first time I saw the wasp I knew it was something really unusual," said Kimsey, a noted wasp expert who oversees the Bohart Museum's global collection of seven million insect specimens, including 500,000 wasps. "I'm very familiar with members of the wasp family Crabronidae that it belongs to but had never seen anything like this species of Dalara. We don't know anything about the biology of these wasps. They are only known from Sulawesi."

Discovered 300 new species
In her entire career as entomologist, she's discovered close to 300 new species. But on three trips to Sulawesi, she's brought back to the Bohart Museum "hundreds, maybe thousands of new species."

"It will take years, maybe generations, to go through them all," Kimsey said. "I consider Sulawesi one of the world's top three islands for biodiversity - along with Australia and Madagascar."

Sulawesi
Sulawesi, a large Indonesian island located between Borneo and New Guinea, is known not only for its endemic biodiversity, but also its rainforest and its proximity (three degrees) to the equator. However development now threatens plant and animal life.

Lynn Kimsey said "The terrain was steep, slippery and overall, physically challenging. This part of Sulawesi gets about 400 inches of rain a year. We were told that Sulawesi has a dry and rainy season. But the only difference we could see between the dry and rainy season is that during the dry season, it rains only in the afternoon."

2 acre spider web
Kimsey expressed amazement at the biodiversity of the flora and fauna. "We saw a colonial spider web that stretched across two acres. The adult spiders were about two inches long. We saw evidence of wild cows, anoa, found only in Sulawesi, and found the first record in that region of a Sulawesi palm civet, a weasel-like predator."

Director of the Bohart Museum since 1989, Kimsey is an insect taxonomist, specializing in bees and wasps and insect diversity. She received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1979 and joined the faculty in 1989.

Collected a millions specimens
Over the last four years, the international team of scientists has collected about a million specimens. Among the new species are: 1 bat, 2 frogs, 2 lizards, 2 fish, a land crab and many insects.

Kimsey is a collaborator of a five-year $4 million grant awarded to UC Davis scientists in 2008 to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on Sulawesi, all considered threatened by logging operations and mining developments. Much of the mountain was logged two decades ago and now there are plans for an open pit nickel mine, Kimsey said.

"There's talk of forming a biosphere reserve to preserve this," she said. "There are so many rare and endangered species on Sulawesi that the world may never see."