A National Tainan University project to document known and newly discovered insect species at the Taijiang National Park recently rediscovered three kinds of rare insects that had not been seen for about a century, the park said.
The three species are the Bembix formosana, the Ascalaphus placidus and the Asclepios apicalis, the park said.
University Department of Ecology professor Chang Yuan-mou (張原謀) said that all three species have only just been rediscovered, adding that the last sighting of the Bembix formosana was about 100 years ago, while sightings of the other species last occurred more than a century ago.
Park conservation division director Huang Kuang-ying (黃光贏) said the park last year commissioned the university to document the insects in the park, adding that the project had discovered insects that are not even listed in the national insect encyclopedia.
According to the project, the Bembix formosana was found mostly between the river and the windbreaker tree line, with its food source primarily being flies that hover around abandoned clamshells originating from clam farms in Tainan.
As the type specimen designated for the Bembix fomosana — initially discovered in 1913 — is located offshore, it has been difficult to pinpoint what it looked like for many years, Chang said, adding that digital archives have aided in identifying the specimen.
The Ascalaphus placidus was mostly found in the park’s wetlands. First discovered by Hans Sauter in 1912 in what is now the city’s Anping District (安平), it has not been seen for the past century, Chang said, adding that it is possible the species is restricted to the Taijiang area.
The Asclepios apicalis, discovered in 1921 by Teiso Esaki, also in Anping District, is the only other type of water striders to be found near the sea, Chang said, adding that it is also the only type known to reside in mangrove areas.
It had not been seen since 1924, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching