
Darwin’s lost beetle specimen found - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/darwins-lost-beetle-is-back
======
basicplus2
TLDR;

Chatzimanolis is an insect systematist, and he is not a generalist.

He specializes in a subtribe of rove beetles called Xanthopygina.

In February 2012 Chatzimanolis was working on a revision of the
Trigonopselaphus genus—a relatively small group of neotropical rove beetles
contained within the Xanthopygina subtribe.

When taxonomists embark on the revision of a genus, they often discover new
species. They find discrepancies:

For the revision, Chatzimanolis requested all the unspecified Trigonopselaphus
material from the Natural History Museum in London.

The specimens arrived by mail in a small box. Inside the box were 24 pinned
beetle specimens, all supposedly belonging to the Trigonopselaphus genus.

Among them, misidentified, was the specimen Darwin collected at Bahía Blanca
in 1832.

Chatzimanolis was one of just a handful of people in the world—perhaps the
only person—who could tell at a glance that the beetle was misplaced. “I was
able to easily figure out that this was not Trigonopselaphus,” he says. “This
is something new.” Then he realized it was a Darwin specimen.

------
pvaldes
Is a slow relate, but stil interesting to remember how many species sit in
drawers in the museums, waiting to be discovered and named. Some of them
probably extinct yet and only exist as specimens. If one researcher just
misplace a bug and put it in the wrong box, the specimen can be "lost" and
unreachable for thousands of years.

Taxonomists able to fix this bugs, in literal and figurated sense, are
vanishing quickly on the other part, both by lack of resources and new blood.
To save hundreds of insects that nobody knows and nobody cares because they
are just another almost identical bug, is a titanic task.

