Are There Undiscovered Insects in New York City?

**Amina Serna** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Serna filling in for Brian today.
In our monthly Wild NYC segment last Friday, we learned all about insects, why they're important, and why we should be concerned that they're in decline. Even though their overall numbers are waning, a recent study revealed that there are more, there are way more unidentified insect species than we thought. There could be up to 20.3 million unknown bugs. The previous number was 6 million. My next guest wants to find one of them. This summer, Benji Jones, senior correspondent at Vox, has set out on a quest to discover a new insect species right here in New York City.
He's here today to tell us more about his mission. Welcome back to WNYC, Benji.

**Benji Jones** (1:03)
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be back talking about bugs.

**Amina Serna** (1:06)
All right, so tell us more about your goal and how you got the idea for this project.

**Benji Jones** (1:11)
Yeah, so it really stems from this incredible fact that we still don't know most life on Earth.
It's hard to say what percent of animal species are undiscovered, but scientists estimate that it could be as many as 90%, which basically means that the bulk of life on our planet that we live on is unknown still. And yes, a lot of these things are harder to see, so like tiny crustaceans in the open ocean or insects that live underground. But we are still discovering new, larger vertebrates, frogs, et cetera. And so just knowing that there's so much out there to still discover the bulk of life, I thought, hey, why don't we try to do this in our own backyard? And I was really inspired by some research that happened years ago in LA, where scientists looked for species of flies, and they found over 40 new fly species in Los Angeles. And so if you can find new fly species in LA, why not try to find them in New York? And I just love spending time in the parks as well, so it seemed like a fun project.

**Amina Serna** (2:17)
So what is the process like to identify a new species? Can you walk us through your plan?

**Benji Jones** (2:23)
Yeah. So like, it's more complicated than I initially thought it would be.
The simple part is just collecting. So there are these devices, these tools for collection called malaise traps named after a Swedish entomologist, Rene Malaise in the 1930s.
And they're essentially giant bug traps. They look a lot like a mesh tent. And the way they work is that you set them up. They're about five feet long, a few feet wide. And they have this mesh plane in the middle. And when insects run into this mesh, they fly instinctively up. And when they fly up, they get collected in this bottle of ethanol, which kills and preserves them. So you can set up these traps in a park. We set one up in Central Park, and we also set one up in Prospect Park. And they passively collect insects. So just by leaving them open, things will run into them. And they're really designed to capture small insects. So we're focused on these small flies called forid flies or scuttle flies, and also small wasps called parasitoid wasps named because they parasitize other insects. And so small insects are really the target animal for this kind of trapping. And just over time, these bottles of ethanol will collect and preserve insects. And then we will send what we collect on a monthly basis to a lab in Canada that does DNA analysis. And that DNA analysis will be just the first step to figuring out if what we have is new.
Essentially what scientists do, it's something called DNA barcoding. You can scan a very small portion of an animal's genome and then compare it to known portions of genomes for animals that we already have discovered. It's kind of like a fingerprint, but for genetic codes. And then if there's no match in these databases of genetics, then we can say, okay, we might have something new. And then we pull in experts who really understand these animal groups and will do the hard work of proving that what we have is indeed new, which includes like going through all the academic literature that's been published so far, looking at what's in museum collection. So it's a lot of work to actually prove beyond reasonable doubt that what you have is a new species.

**Amina Serna** (4:38)
And then you have to name it. So listeners, I wonder if in our last like 13 minutes here, if anybody wants to play along, do you want to help Benji name the new species?