Discovery and description of a new fly species for science from Vietnam

06/03/2023

A new species of fly for science, named Cabamofa vietnamensis, has been discovered and described from Cuc Phuong National Park, Ninh Binh province, northern Vietnam, published in Zootaxa September 2022. The specimen obtained is part of a project supported by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education called: “Innovative approaches to biodiversity in Vietnam - Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterization” (VIETBIO). The VIETBIO project is a collaboration between the Berlin Museum of Natural History - Leibniz Institute of Evolutionary Sciences and Biodiversity (MfN), Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie University Berlin (BGBM) and Vietnam national Museum of Nature (VNMN), Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE) and Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB) under Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST).

Species new to science were collected and described by scientists from the Vietnam Museum of Nature, the Museum of Natural History and the Bavarian National Specimen Collection, Federal Republic of. Germany, along with Swedish and Canadian entomologists.

The genus Cabamofa, originally introduced for C. mira from Costa Rica (Jaschhof 2005), was recently shown to have a second species, C. orientalis, in Thailand (Jaschhof & Ševčik 2019). In the present paper we describe C. vietnamensis Jaschhof, 2022 from Vietnam, based on a single male collected by the VIETBIO project. VIETBIO (“Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterization in Vietnam”) is a bilateral German-Vietnamese research and capacity building project focused on the development and transfer of new methods and technology towards an integrated biodiversity and monitoring system for Vietnam (Duwe et al. 2022).

Finds of Cabamofa are exceptional events; of the three species now placed in this genus only five specimens are known in collections (Jaschhof & Ševčik 2019). Since we anticipate further species of Cabamofa to be found in the Oriental region in the future.

Pictures of new species Cabamofa vietnamensis Jaschhof, 2022 (Figs 1–4)

Figures 1–4. Cabamofa vietnamensis, 2022, male holotype. 1: Habitus, lateral (specimen in ethanol after DNA extraction). 2: Wing, dorsal, setae omitted. 3: Base of wing, dorsal, setae omitted. 4: Genitalia, ventral. Scale for 1 and 2, 1.0 mm, for 3, 0.5 mm, and for 4, 0.1 mm. Abbreviations: cerc = cercus, hyp = hypoproct, tgm = tegmen, tg9 = ninth tergite.

Source: Mathias Jaschhof, Valerie Levesque-Beaudin, Adam Broadley, Kai Heller, Vu Van Lien, Christoph Häuser, Stefan Schmidt. 2022. Description of Cabamofa vietnamensis sp. nov., the second species of Cabamofa in mainland southeast Asia (Diptera: Bibionomorpha: Sciaroidea incertae sedis). Zootaxa 5182 (3): 297–300. Doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5182.3.7

News: Vietnam National Museum of Nature, VAST
Link to Vietnamese version

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