Meet Excastra albopilosa, a newly identified species of longhorn beetle that rocks an unusually fluffy white coat.
Discovered in Australia, the fuzzy-looking arthropod also has distinct, separated eye lobes, short antennal segments and unique variations in the shapes of its legs. All these factors suggest the beetle may warrant being classified as its own genetic family, or genus, researchers report March 19 in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.
Roughly 18,000 species of all kinds are discovered each year — at least half of which are insects. “I’m actually surprised that this species had not been discovered before,” says Menno Schilthuizen, an evolutionary biologist at Taxon Expeditions in Leiden, Netherlands,
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