Word: barclay
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...collections manager at London's Natural History Museum, Max Barclay has traveled the world in search of rare and previously undiscovered insects. So when his 5-year-old son took a break from a picnic lunch last March in the museum's garden and returned with an insect in his hand, Barclay could not have guessed that his question--"Daddy, what's this?"--would lead to a global detective hunt that has so far stumped Barclay and the world's other entomologists...
Despite working with an insect collection of more than 28 million specimens, Barclay and his colleagues have been unable to identify the almond-shaped critter, about the size of a grain of rice, which has in the past year made itself at home in the sycamore trees on the 19th century museum's grounds in central London. "My field work has taken me all over the world--to Thailand, Bolivia, Peru. So I was surprised to be confronted by an unidentifiable species while having a sandwich in the museum's garden," Barclay says...
Within three months of the discovery, the insect had become the most common species in the garden and was spotted in other central London parks, sending Barclay on a worldwide hunt to identify it. Correspondence with colleagues around Europe led Barclay to discover that the insect, which resembles the common North American box elder bug, is actually most closely related to Arocatus roeselii, a relatively rare species of seed eaters usually found in central Europe. But those bugs are associated with alder trees rather than sycamores. An insect specimen found in Nice, France, which is now in the collection...
...Whatever the reason for the appearance of the mysterious new bug in London, Barclay says its rampant spread around the city is harmless. However, "it does show what's possible [if more damaging species invade...
...struggle to identify the critter displays not only the mystery of nature, but also the fickleness of the science of taxonomy. Identifying insect species can be extremely difficult; some scientists estimate we have managed to identify only 10% of the insect world so far. The rest, like Barclays' almond-shaped mystery bug, are perfectly happy to crawl along without any christening or approval from their relatively gargantuan cohabitants. But that won't stop scientists like Barclay from trying. For him, the question asked by his five-year old son last March is a calling he still feels compelled to answer...