Giant St. Helena earwig

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Giant St. Helena earwig
Labidura herculeana.jpg

Giant St. Helena Earwig ( Labidura herculeana )

Systematics
Class : Insects (Insecta)
Subclass : Flying insects (Pterygota)
Order : Earwigs (Dermaptera)
Family : Labiduridae
Genre : Labidura
Type : Giant St. Helena earwig
Scientific name
Labidura herculeana
( Fabricius , 1798)

The St. Helena giant earwig ( Labidura herculeana ), also known as St. Helena earwig , is a catchy species that occurs or was found on the remote island of St. Helena in the Central Atlantic. It was discovered and described by the Danish zoologist Johann Christian Fabricius in 1798 . It has not been proven since 1967. Even so, many scholars hope that he could have survived in some remote areas of St. Helena.

description

The giant St. Helena earwig is the largest earwig in the world. It becomes up to 84 mm long. Of this, 50 mm is accounted for by the body length and 34 mm for the length of the grippers. The body is glossy black with reddish legs and short wings. The hind wings are missing. The species has great morphological resemblance to the sand earwig ( Lapidura riparia ), which is only 28 mm long and also occurs on St. Helena.

Way of life

Labidura herculeana lived in deep burrows that he only left at night or when it rained. His diet probably consisted of plants. Its predators presumably included the extinct St. Helena hoopoe ( Upupa antaios ) as well as introduced mice and rats.

distribution and habitat

The St. Helena giant earwig lives or lived in lowland areas, in "Gumwood Tree" forests or in seabird colonies on scree. Occurrences are known from Horse Point and Prosperous Bay as well as from the Eastern Arid Area on St. Helena.

status

The giant St. Helena earwig has long been ignored by science. In 1913 the French naturalist Guy Babault collected the second specimen (after the type specimen from 1798), which is now in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris . Subsequently, the species fell into oblivion again until the British ornithologists Douglas Dorward and Philip Ashmole found some enormous grasping tongs in 1962 while searching for bird bones in Prosperous Bay. The zoologist Arthur Loveridge later confirmed that these grasping tongs belonged to a giant earwig.

In 1965 a Belgian expedition discovered individuals living in a small area in the Horse Point area in northeast St. Helena. About 40 specimens were collected up to 1967, since then the species has been considered lost. Probably the persecution by mice and rats, the destruction of the "Gumwood Tree" forests and the competition with the introduced centipede Scolopendra morsitans contributed to his disappearance.

Search expeditions of the London Zoo in 1988 and 1993 as well as further searches in 2003 by Philip Ashmole and 2006 by Howard Mendel were unsuccessful. In 1995, in the Prosperous Bay the subfossil Tongs found a female.

In November 2005, the construction of an airport on St. Helena was announced in the press . As a result, many scientists spoke out in favor of abandoning the airport construction because it could wipe out many endemic animal species, including the giant St. Helena earwig, if it still exists. In 2007, 3800 residents of St. Helena voted in a referendum in favor of the airport, which was approved in May 2016.

2014 Saint Helena Earwig was organized by the IUCN officially for "extinct" ( extinct explained).

literature

  • P. Ashmole, M. Ashmole: St. Helena and Ascension Island: a natural history . Anthony Nelson, Oswestry, 2000. ISBN 0904614611
  • Karl Shuker : The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century . HarperCollins London, 1993. ISBN 0002199432
  • SM Wells, RM Pyle & NM Collins: IUCN Invertebrate Red Data Book . International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1983. ISBN 2880326028 ( online edition )

Web links