''Orestes ziegleri'' is a species of
stick insect
The Phasmatodea (also known as Phasmida, Phasmatoptera or Spectra) are an order of insects whose members are variously known as stick insects, stick-bugs, walking sticks, stick animals, or bug sticks. They are also occasionally referred to as ...
native to
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
.
Characteristics
The only female known to date is long, with on the head, on the
pronotum, on the
mesonotum and fall into the median segment. The coloration is given as chocolate brown, whereas the photo of the living animal attached to the first description shows a very light, rather beige coloration, which corresponds to the darkening of
adult
An adult is a human or other animal that has reached full growth. In human context, the term ''adult'' has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a " minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of major ...
females of other ''
Orestes'' species. On the head there are two rows
tubercle
In anatomy, a tubercle (literally 'small tuber', Latin for 'lump') is any round nodule, small eminence, or warty outgrowth found on external or internal organs of a plant or an animal.
In plants
A tubercle is generally a wart-like projection ...
s converging from the
vertex
Vertex, vertices or vertexes may refer to:
Science and technology Mathematics and computer science
*Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, or edges meet
*Vertex (computer graphics), a data structure that describes the position ...
towards the
occiput
The occipital bone () is a cranial dermal bone and the main bone of the occiput (back and lower part of the skull). It is trapezoidal in shape and curved on itself like a shallow dish. The occipital bone overlies the occipital lobes of the cereb ...
. They each consist of three large tubercles, which correspond to the supraantennals, the anterior and posterior supraoccipitals. Domed part of the occiput also with two rows of three smaller tubercles each, converging backwards. The bulge itself has laterally flat tubercles. The cheeks (
genae
This glossary of entomology describes terms used in the formal study of insect species by entomologists.
A–C
A synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide, toxic to vertebrates. Though i ...
) behind with an approximately tooth-shaped, large tubercle. The eyes are hemispherically protruding. The first five
tergite of the
abdomen
The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso. ...
are equal in length and widen posteriorly. Tergites seven to nine are parallel-sided, the tenth rectangular. Males of ''Orestes ziegleri'' are not known.
The dark brown eggs are long, wide and high. They are covered with long hairs and the shape of the operculum and micropylar plate correspond to that of many other ''Orestes'' species.
Distribution area and occurrence
The female of this species on which the first description is based was collected by Ingo Fritzsche between October 19 and 25, 1997 in the south of Khao Mai Pok in the
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
Nakhon Ratchasima province collected at an altitude between .
Taxonomy
In 1999
Oliver Zompro
Oliver Zompro is a German biologist who is credited with the discovery in 2002 of a new suborder of carnivorous African insects, Mantophasmatodea or "gladiators", which was originally considered to be a new insect order but was later relegated to ...
and Fritzsche described the species under the
basionym
In the scientific name of organisms, basionym or basyonym means the original name on which a new name is based; the author citation of the new name should include the authors of the basionym in parentheses. The term "basionym" is used in both botan ...
''Dares ziegleri''. The species name was chosen in honor of German hobby
entomologist
Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...
Ulrich Ziegler, who died in 1994 and whom both authors thank for his support in the early years. The female collected by Fritzsche is deposited as a
holotype
A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...
in Zompro's collection, as are the nine eggs laid by it. The affiliation of the species to ''
Dares
Dares Phrygius ( grc, Δάρης), according to Homer, was a Trojan priest of Hephaestus. He was supposed to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy, and to have lived before Homer. A work in Latin, purporting to be a transla ...
'' was already discussed in the first description. Establishing a separate genus without knowledge of the males was discarded.
Already in 2004 Zompro withdrew the name and
synonymised the species with ''Datames guangxiensis'', which has been referred to as ''Pylaemenes guangxiensis'' since the synonymisation of the genus ''Datames'' with ''
Pylaemenes
In Greek mythology, Pylaemenes (Ancient Greek: Πυλαιμένης) may refer to two distinct characters:
* Pylaemenes, king of the Eneti tribe of Paphlagonia. He claimed to be related to Priam through Phineus, as the latter's daughter Olizone ...
'' in 1998 (valid name today: ''
Orestes guangxiensis''). In the same work he placed it in the genus ''Dares''.
In 2006,
Paul D. Brock
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chris ...
and Masaya Okada canceld both, the synonymization of ''Dares ziegleri'' and the assignment of ''Pylaemenes guangxiensis'' to ''Dares'', so that ''Dares ziegleri'' was again listed as a valid species.
After a clearer differentiation between the genera ''Orestes'' and ''Pylaemenes'' had been specified in 2018,
the species became 2021 due to the characteristics listed in the first description transferred to the genus ''Orestes'' by
Joachim Bresseel
Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Biblical apocryphal ...
and Kawin Jiaranaisakul. They further pointed out that both the publication by Zompro (2004) and that by Brock and Okada (2006) contained identification keys in which a mesonotum is typical for ''Pylaemenes'', which is more than twice as long as the pronotum, which is the case with ''Orestes ziegleri'' according to the first description. Thus, an assignment to ''Pylaemenes'' and not to ''Dares'' would have been correct at the time.
References
[ Brock, P. D.; Büscher, T. H. & Baker, E. W. ]
Phasmida Species File Online
'. Version 5.0/5.0. (access-date 29 July 2022)
[ Bresseel, J. & Constant, J. (2018). ]
The Oriental stick insect genus Orestes Redtenbacher, 1906: Taxonomical notes and six new species from Vietnam (Phasmida: Heteropterygidae: Dataminae).
' Belgian Journal of Entomology 58: p. 60, Brüssel, ,
[Brock, P. D. & Okada, M. (2005). ''Taxonomic notes on Pylaemenes Stål 1875 (Phasmida: Heteropterygidae: Dataminae), including of the description of the male of P. guanxiensis (Bi & Li, 1994)''. Journal of Orthopthera Research, 14(1), pp. 23–26]
[ Zompro, O. & Fritzsche, I. (1999). ]
Dares ziegleri n.sp., eine neue Phasmide aus Thailand (Phasmatodea: Heteropterygidae: Obriminae: Datamini)
', Arthropoda - Magazin für Wirbellose im Terrarium, Jahrgang 7(1), pp. 10–12,
[Zompro, O: ''Revision of the genera of the Areolatae, including the status of Timema and Agathemera (Insecta, Phasmatodea)'', Goecke & Evers, Keltern-Weiler 2004, pp. 219–220, ISBN 978-3931374396]
[ Hennemann, F. H.: ''Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Phasmidenfauna von Sulawesi''. Mitteilungen des Museums für Naturkunde, Berlin 1998, Zoologische Reihe 74, pp. 95–128]
[Bresseel, J. & Kawin Jiaranaisakul, K.: ]
Pylaemenes scrupeus sp. nov., a new Datamini from Thailand (Phasmida: Heteropterygidae: Dataminae).
' Belgian Journal of Entomology 123: pp. 1–15, Brüssel 2021,
{{Taxonbar, from=Q10466846
Phasmatodea
Phasmatodea of Indo-China
Insects described in 1999