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The Department of Life Science of National Taiwan Normal University and National Museum of Natural Science have published papers about the “striped” Curculionidae that only live in the Green Island. Pachyrrhynchus is only found in the Orchid Island and the Green Island and many of them are protected species. Recently, the two institutes discovered the pachyrhynchus jitanasaius that is endemic to Green Island. 

The research team was interested in the diffusion and evolution of pachyrhynchus jitanasaius. By looking into the DNA, they found that two groups of insects that were named pachyrhynchus jitanasaius were different in genetic variation. Chen Yen Ting, from NTNU, started to analyze what he found in genetics. Dr. Huang, Dr. Cheng and Dr. Tseng from National Museum of Natural Science and Dr. Su from Kaohsiung Medical University worked together and submitted a paper to Systematic Entomology. The paper was accepted.

By integrating the analytical structure of different data, we can define the species with more evidence and a more broad vision. Many island species form different species because they are isolated by the ocean, if they are poor in mobility (for example, those don’t fly), it’s more likely for them to form different species on the island.

From this study, we can found that the diversity of Curculionidae is under estimated. There are so many different species of Curculionidae on such tiny island as the Orchid Island and Green Island.