Giant Lacewing Discovered in Fayetteville, AR After 50-Year Absence

Auf einen Blick

• A giant insect, Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing, was recently discovered in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over fifty years.
• The discovery was made by Michael Skvarla in 2012 and identified after he taught an online course in 2020.
• The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s.
• The researchers analyzed extensive collection records of giant lacewings and placed them into a single map to determine their distribution.
• The mystery remains as to how the insect arrived on the exterior of a Walmart.

Die Details

Giant Insect Discovered in Fayetteville, Arkansas

A giant insect, Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing, was recently discovered in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over fifty years.

The discovery was made by Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab, in 2012, but it was only recently identified after Skvarla taught an online course based on his personal insect collection in 2020.

Skvarla and his colleagues recently co-authored a paper about the discovery in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.

The paper includes molecular DNA analyses of the specimen, which has been deposited in the collections of the Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State.

Mysterious Extirpation of Giant Lacewings

The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s.

Scientists hypothesize the insect’s disappearance could be due to the ever-increasing amount of artificial light and pollution of urbanization, suppression of forest fires in eastern North America, introduction of non-native predators such as large ground beetles, and introduction of non-native earthworms.

Analysis of Collection Records

The researchers analyzed extensive collection records of giant lacewings and placed them into a single map to determine their distribution.

The records span a huge geographic range, from Alaska to Panama, and include multiple ecoregions in both eastern and western North America.

Fayetteville lies within the Ozark Mountains, which are a suspected biodiversity hotspot.

Dozens of endemic species, including 68 species of insects, are known from the Ozarks and at least 58 species of plants and animals have highly disjunct populations with representatives in the region.

Mystery of Insect’s Arrival

The mystery remains as to how the insect arrived on the exterior of a Walmart.

The researchers note that they suspect the new specimen represents a rare, surviving eastern population of giant lacewings that evaded detection and extinction.