‘Tree lobster’ stick insects found alive despite extinction warning

Australian Community Media

The six-inch-long Lord Howe Island stick insect was incorrectly declared extinct in the 1920s, but scientists have matched its DNA with living stick insects from a neighbouring island. Video via AAP

Transcript

00:00So we've got two specimens of the Lodau stick insect, collected on Lodau.

00:06So these are historical specimens.

00:09And then we've got some specimens that were sent to us by the Melbourne Zoo

00:14when they were rearing specimens from individuals collected on Bolt's Pyramid,

00:20which is the small island near Lodau, where the species was found again in 2001.

00:26They look a little bit different, and so for some time it was questioned

00:31whether they were indeed the same species, and it was the Lodau stick insect

00:35or something different, related but different.

00:39So a team of experts, including two scientists from the ANIC, from our collections,

00:45extracted DNA from these very two specimens that you can see here

00:49and compared the DNA with one extracted from the new specimens.

00:54And they match, so they are exactly the same species.

00:58It's just that different environments may have led to a slightly different morphology,

01:03but they are genetically the same.

01:05They're the same species, which are the entire species.

01:06And they're the same species, which is hollow and that they have a lot of animals.

01:08So, they are the same species.

01:10They have many species.

01:11And they have these species.

01:12And so, the berries are the same species.

01:14They are the same species.

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