A Murray State University biology professor has named a new insect species after her daughter, who helped make the discovery while they were planting flowers in their backyard. Sydni Anderson spoke with Laura Sullivan-Beckers and her five-year-old daughter Sylvie about the little green treehopper species theyâve named âHebetica sylviae.â
Beckers said in summer 2016, Sylvie, then-two-years-old, was helping plant wildflowers in a flower bed in their backyard when she accidentally over-watered the bed.
Thatâs when Beckers noticed insects floating in the standing water.âI noticed all of these treehopper dead bodies floating on top and some of them I recognized but a lot of them I didnât and there were hundreds of them, just âoh my gosh,ââshe said.
She described the treehopper as looking like a raindrop. She said the species is in the raindrop genera. Beckers and her daughter collected more than a thousand treehoppers over the summer, including about 60 or 70 of the new species. Remarking on the discovery in a release sent by Murray State University, Beckers said, âItâs true that science involves luck and serendipity. I was at the right place at the right time with the perfect field assistant.â
Beckers said wasps will sting and bury treehoppers in the soil for their larvae to feed upon. She noticed, in addition to hundreds of treehoppers in the soil were also hundreds of wasp larvae.
She said the difference betweenHebetica sylviaeand other treehoppers is technical.
She showed the specimen to her PhD advisor Rex Cocroft who is a treehopper specialist. He said heâd seen something similar in South or Central America, but had never seen any north of that region. âHe said either itâs a new species or itâs the same one and itâs just migrated really far north,â Beckers said.
Beckers then sent the specimen to USDA research entomologist Stuart McKamey. He conducted detailed morphological work, such comparing species wing venation. âSo he was getting specimens borrowed from museums in London and all sorts of places to confirm that it wasnât a Central American species, that it was, in fact, a different, unnamed species.â
Beckers and McKamey will publish the description of theHebetica sylviaein the July issue of the scientific journal âProceedings of the Entomological Society of Washingtonâ.
As for whatâs next, Beckers wants to study the insectâs behavioral biology and hopes to find living specimen. âIâve never seen them alive. Iâve been trying to find them alive ever since this discovery. But Iâm pretty sure they live at the top of a 60-foot-tall oak tree. So I need somebody with a cherry picker to come help me get me up to the top of the tree so that I can actually learn about them alive and not just dead,â she said.
As for Sylvie, she considers herself a âhalf-scientist.â Her favorite bugs are spiders and butterflies and she likes treehoppers only âa teensy bit.â
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