By George Ledbetter
CHADRON – The unusual-looking insects first collected by Chadron State College Biology Professor Dr. Matthew Brust in sand dunes in south-central Wyoming have now been confirmed as a new species of scarab beetle and named after him.
Brust’s discovery of a new member of the bumblebee scarab beetle family, now known as Lichnanthe brusti, has also led to the classification of a beetle specimen collected in Nebraska more than 100 years ago as another new species.
An avid collector and naturalist, Brust first noticed the beetles on a trip to the Ferris Dunes, near Rawlins, Wyoming, in June 2022, while searching for tiger beetles. Surprised by the bee-like wing covers and flight patterns of the beetles he saw flying early in the day, Brust collected four specimens and later sent one to Dr. Matt Paulsen, a scarab beetle expert at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, who indicated the find might be a new species.
Brust’s subsequent visit to the same area one year later didn’t yield any more of the insects, but, acting on the knowledge that the beetle prefers sand dune habitat, he went early the next day to the nearby Seminoe Dunes and soon captured enough specimens for the complete description needed to assess their species classification.
In a paper published this month in the journal Insecta Mundi, Paulsen confirmed the approximately half-inch long insects as a new species of a scarab beetle family known previously to have only eight described members in America.
In the paper Paulsen also provides a detailed description of a single beetle specimen in the UNL collection found at a site on the Dismal River in Thomas County in 1889 by famed UNL professor Lawrence Bruner. From the precise analysis of that specimen, and comparison with the one found by Brust, Paulsen concluded it is also a separate species, which he named Licnanthe bruni.
“These two species … are immediately distinguishable from all existing species of the genus by their square mandibles,” Paulsen said.
An expert in identifying grasshoppers, Brust said his familiarity with a variety of insect families led to collection of the first beetle specimens.
“Having been around a lot, if it’s something I’ve never seen before, it might be something unusual,” he said.
The timing of his initial visit to the dunes was also significant, as the adult beetles only seem to emerge in the morning and die within a few days.
“You have got to be in the right place at the right time,” Brust said.
Brust said he started collecting insects when he was young and never outgrew the habit. His personal collection of tiger beetles numbers close to 1,000 specimens, and he estimates having identified more than 100,000 grasshoppers, primarily through work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Expertise in insect identification also led Brust to notice ground beetle specimens in the CSC collection, gathered by retired professor Randy Lawson in the 1980s, as an undescribed new species.
“Those specimens sat in the basement for 30 years before I noticed they were unique,” he said. “That’s the second species I’ve discovered.”
The new discoveries highlight the purpose of collecting and keeping specimens, according to Brust.
“You never know what might be important,” he said.
Brust is now excited to join Paulsen in a search for more of the species from Nebraska that is thus far is known from only one 134-year-old specimen. That beetle could be extinct, endangered, or possibly plentiful in the Sandhills, he said.
“I want to see if it’s still around. It’s like rediscovering an extinct critter.”
Brust thinks the naming of his beetle discovery is the first time a species has been named for a Chadron State faculty member.
“I was rather pleasantly surprised that this was something new to science,” he said of the serendipitous find. “To me this is just a thing I do. I go to places that nobody does, and I pay attention. I just want to contribute to my field. That’s what matters most.”