Three wasps new to science were hiding in a single Brunei forest

In one small patch of rainforest in Brunei, on the island of Borneo, insect traps once caught something nobody recognised — and it has taken years of careful study to give it names. Writing in the journal ZooKeys, researchers have now described three wasp species that are entirely new to science, all from the Kuala Belalong field site. They belong to a group called Wroughtonia — parasitoid wasps, whose young develop inside other insects — which has 58 known species around the world but had never once been recorded on Borneo. Finding three new ones together in a single place carries a hopeful message: this corner of the island is probably not poor in such wasps at all, just barely looked at. The largest of the three is about 12 millimetres (about half an inch) long. The specimens, gathered back in 1991 and kept at the Natural History Museum in London, finally have names — one of them, Wroughtonia belalongensis, is named after the field centre itself. What these wasps live on, and how far across Borneo they spread, is still unknown — an open invitation for the next survey.

SDG 15 · Life on land