Vietnamese and international scientists have announced the discoveries of a new species of beetle and two new species of cicadas in Vietnam.

Pham Hong Thai, a scientist from the Vietnam National Museum of Nature under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), informed the official Vietnam News Agency of the findings on Wednesday.

They were the fruit of joint efforts by entomologists from the Hanoi-based museum and their colleagues from Japan and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Thai said.

A new species of beetle named Rhyparus vietnamicus Ochi, Kusui, Pham, 2018 was discovered by Japanese and Vietnamese scientists in the northern province of Lao Cai.

According to its scientific description, the beetle belongs to the genus Rhyparus, tribe Rhyparini, subfamily Aphodiinae, family Scarabaeidae, and order Coleoptera.

Specimens of the new beetle species were collected by the scientists in Lao Cai, measuring 7.7 to 7.9 millimeters in body length.

With the discovery, there are now two species of the genus Rhyparus confirmed to be distributed in Vietnam.

Around the same time, scientists from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and their peers from the Vietnam National Museum of Nature also announced two new species of cicadas.

They are from the genus Sogana, family Tropiduchidae, sub-order Auchenorrhyncha, order Hemiptera.

The scientists named one species Sogana bachmana Constant & Pham, 2019 and the other Sogana baviana Constant & Pham, 2019.

The male specimens of the two species of cicadas measure 29.0 millimeters and 23.5 millimeters in length, respectively.

The family Tropiduchidae consists of about 660 species distributed across the world, of which 20 have been found in Vietnam to date, following Wednesday’s announcement.

Of the genus Sogana’s 13 species, five have been discovered in Vietnam, accounting for around 40 percent of the total number of species under the genus.

Such statistics may not fully reflect the diversity of the family Tropiduchidae in Vietnam, according to the entomologists, as there are many discoveries of new species and genera in the Southeast Asian country still waiting to be announced.

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