Evergoderes

Erasmus students at IPNA-CSIC rediscover a species thought to be extinct

Lukas Knob, Lisa Mahla and Jann Kolmsee are Erasmus students at the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA- CSIC) and students of Professor Axel Hochkirch of the Universität Trier (Germany), collaborator of our colleague Heriberto López.

These students have been working in Gran Canaria looking for species of grasshoppers and tetigonids that were mentioned in that island a long time ago and of which nothing was ever known again.

One of them is Evergoderes cabrerai, an endemic species of Gran Canaria, and the only representative in the world of the genus Evergoderes. Of this species, only one male specimen was known, captured in 1930 in the surroundings of Agaete Spa, and one female, captured in 1964, for which the locality of capture is unknown. Scientists from various institutions have tried to search for this species without success in the last 20 years, so Evergoderes cabrerai is a species of which nothing is known about its distribution, ecology or biology, thus becoming a real mystery of the Canary Islands fauna.

For this reason it was catalogued as "Critically Endangered" by IUCN, and after so many failed attempts to find it again it was beginning to be thought that it had probably become extinct. After three months of fieldwork, in the last week of their stay on the island, these three students have found a female of this species.

The rediscovery of this species is undoubtedly very good news for science, as it rules out the possibility that this tetigonid has become extinct. In addition, a new line of work is opened to study its biology, ecology and behavior, and to evaluate if its scarcity is due to some type of threat. Axel Hochkirch has experience in leading teams studying supposedly extinct species in various parts of the world. In previous years, his Erasmus students at the IPNA also participated in the rediscovery of the grasshopper Dericorys minutus, an endemic species of Gran Canaria also considered extinct and catalogued as "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, of which only one male specimen was known, captured in Maspalomas in 1949. In this case, his Erasmus students have done an excellent job with this species, making interesting discoveries about its distribution, ecology and biology.

These works, led by Axel Hochkirch, will continue to have the institutional and scientific support of IPNA-CSIC.

 

 

 

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Evergoderes