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From My News – World

MY PAPER WEDNESDAY JULY 16, 2008

LONDON: Experts at London’s world-famous Natural History Museum are being stumped by a common bug in their own back yard.

They pride themselves on being able to classify and display thousands of species – from birds and mammals to insects, dinosaurs and snakes – and are confident can identify most living things on the planet.

Except a tiny red-and-black bug that has appeared in the museum’s own gardens.

The almond-shaped insect, the size of a grain of rice, was first seen in March last year on some of the plane trees that grow on the grounds of the 19th-century museum, its collections manager, Mr Max Barclay, said yesterday.

Within three months, it had become the most common insect in the garden, and had also been spotted in other central London parks, he said.

The museum has more than 28 million insect species in its collection, but none is an exact match for this insect. Still, Mr Barclay was cautious about calling it a new discovery.

The museum will be involving international experts to analyse the bug’s body shape, form and DNA to see if it has been discovered before.

“I don’t expect to find a new species in the gardens of a museum,” he said.

“Deep inside a tropical rainforest, yes, but not in central London.”

The bug resembles the Arocatus roeselii, which is usually found in central Europe, but is a brighter red and lives on alder trees.

Entomologists suspect the new bug could be a version of the roeselii that has adapted to live on plane trees, but admit it could be a whole new species.

-AP

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