by Piter Kehoma Boll
The Cordillera del Cóndor, between Peru and Ecuador, is a very precious region. With astonishing biodiversity, it includes the largest number of plant species per area in South America. And hidden between this diverse flora we can find a peculiar and beautiful creature that is today’s fellow.
Named Peruphasma schultei, it is a stick insect sometimes called the black beauty stick insect. Measuring up to 55 mm in length, with males being smaller than females, this stick insect is medium-to-large-sized compared to other species in this insect order. Although short, they are also very robust, with females being thicker than males, so that they do not actually resemble a stick. The body is mostly black, but the eyes are yellow and the mouth and the posterior part of the small hindwings are red.
Like all stick insects, the black beauty stick insect is a herbivore. In the wild, it seems to feed mostly on pepper trees (plants of the genus Schinus), but very little is known about its ecology. When feeling threatened, it erects its small wings and sprays an irritating mixture of glucose and peruphasmal, a substance that is exclusive to this species (and perhaps some closely related ones).
The black beauty stick insect is only known to occur in a very small area of only 5 hectares and is considered a critically endangered species. Nevertheless, it has become a very popular pet worldwide because of its unusual color.
In captivity, the black beauty stick insect can feed on a variety of plants. Captive populations also present some specimens, especially males, in which the wings are pink instead of red, a phenotype caused by a mutation in a gene located in the sex chromosomes.
Although the black beauty stick insect’s natural population on the Cordillera del Cóndor is critically endangered, there is already a significant population in captivity and you can find them for sale on websites that sell pet insects. Is this good news for this species? I am not sure. Can we feel fine knowing that the species is surviving as a pet when its populations in the wild are about to become extinct? What is the point of preserving a species without letting it play its role in the world?
– – –
– – –
References:
Conle, O. V. (2005). Studies on neotropical Phasmatodea I: a remarkable new species of Peruphasma Conffile & Hennemann, 2002 from northern Peru (Phasmatodea: Pseudophasmatidae: Pseudophasmatinae). Zootaxa, 1068, 59-68.
McLeod, M. P., Dossey, A. T., & Ahmed, M. K. (2007). Application of attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy in the study of Peruphasma schultei defensive secretion. Spectroscopy, 21(3), 169-176.
van de Kamp, T. (2011). The “pink wing” morph of Peruphasma schultei Conffile & Hennemann, 2005 (Phasmatodea: Pseudophasmatidae). Entomologische Zeitschrift, 121(2), 55-58.
Wikipedia. Peruphasma schultei. Available at < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peruphasma_schultei >. Access on 24 December 2021.
– – –
*
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Earthling Nature 