a deadly secret had been hidden on the mountain longer than anyone knew, disguised as another infamous killer, They were free to roam the valley for thousands of years. Unchallenged what they went about ending the lives of numerous aphids and they almost got away with it until one day someone found them. Your Salvation Ladybugs. Ladybugs, Ladybugs. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 35 of Hidden Wings and Bloodlust, a podcast about lady bird's around the world. I'm your host, Rachel.
We've got a bit of a special lady bird for you today. But before we get into that, I want to tell you about next week's interview. I'm speaking to Mohammad Najjar genre and Marcin comes idea of the Palestine Museum of Natural History at the University of Bethlehem. So this is going to be an incredibly interesting conversation. I do hope you if you're subscribed that you check it out because I'm really looking forward to it.
And another exciting thing that's out this weekend is the UK Wildlife Podcasts, 50th episode Together with I think nine or 8 other podcasters. We had a sort of evening of chaos and it was a hell of a lot of fun to record. So that's out. Now I'll put a link in the show notes and I'm as soon as I finished recording this, I'm going to go listen to it myself because it was such a lot of fun, had such a good time and I if you haven't already subscribed.
It's an excellent podcast to listen to my podcast recommendation for this week is the outfit walk podcast. This is a new podcast presented by Anthony Chalmers in each episode, Anthony walks around a different location, taking in local history, nature and field recordings. And it's a really fascinating show, really relaxing to listen to and I'm really enjoying it.
In the most recent episode, I listened to Anthony headed to the thames estuary with john Zimmer where they walked around Crawford marshes. So we're not in Palestine for this episode or at the Crawford marshes, but we're staying in the middle East.
We're going to Iran and more specifically, we're going to a mountainous region around shared a cool mountain in Yazd province in the central Iran Because back in 2014 an Iranian entomologist called Method, together with a Czech entomologist called Odrick nedved and a team of other researchers was conducting field research on lady birds. Around the cook Burnin mountains in kerman province in southern Iran and on shikoku and the surrounding mountains.
Now, I want to say something about shinjuku mountain, it is part of a series of mountains that encircle the west side of a central desert in Iran in Persian should ku means lion and in kurdish, The name Sherko is commonly given to boys and means lion of the mountain. Very cool. Was a kurdish military commander in the 16th century who was the uncle of Saladin and Saladin of course was the famous warrior who fought the crusaders.
He was given the nickname assad Hardin in Arabic, which means lion of faith as well as the mountain being named Shekou, his name is also given to several modern day Iranian villages. Now, if you look at a map of Iran Yazd is almost slap bang in the middle. It's about 170 kilometers from Isfahan, which is the third largest city in Iran. Yazd is the capital of Yazd province and it has around 530,000 inhabitants.
So around a sort of medium sized city and in a 2011 census, the province itself, The city and the surrounding area had around one million inhabitants shared a coup Mountain is around 40 km from the city of Yazd and it is the highest peak in that province. It reaches 4,055 m above sea level. For comparison, Snowden, which is the highest mountain in Wales, is around 3560 m. Mount Everest is between 615,600 m. So it's around sort of middling size.
It's not the tallest mountain in the world, but it is pretty high. However, It is very biodiverse. A total of 610 different types of plants have been found there, of which 91 have been included in the red list of plants of Iran. The red list denotes plants which are threatened and there are thought to be a very large number of undiscovered and undescribed invertebrates there. So while they were exploring one of the valleys in the mountain range around between 2000, and 3155 m above sea level.
Zora Hormuz and his team made a startling discovery. And if you're a fan of the show, you can probably guess what that discovery was. It was a new type of lady bird. And at the beginning of 2020 this lady bird was recognized as a new species. Zootopia shirkey hens is Zora Hormuz named this lady bird after the mountains where it was discovered.
Oh no pia is quite a common genus of lady bird in europe, and the name Zootopia originally referred to the Greek island of a gina, an island in the saronic gulf of southeastern Greece near Athens. But the story doesn't end there because Zootopia Shirko census has developed in a very interesting way. I'm going to describe the ladybird, and you can also take a look at the picture of included in the show notes. And after that, perhaps you can guess what might have happened.
So the background color of the ladybird Delaitre is pinky red and orange, and there is a thin dark line going down the middle of the ladybird called the suitor or line on each side of the ladybird. There is one small black round spot, the pro notam of Ono ps jerky hens is creamy white and has seven spots forming a V. V. V. Pattern with two more small spots just in front of the lady bird's eyes.
Lady birds from the O. N. O. P. A genus of which there are several in Iran can be anything between 2.5 millimeters long to six millimeters long, although from the information are found on Zootopia. Shirkey hens is These lady birds are between three and 5 mm long, so slightly smaller than a two spot. One lady bird was found to have large spots extending towards one another.
The ladybird has got brown legs and antennae, but the abdomen is completely black, so the position of the two spots on Ono pia Shirkey hens is is the same position as two of the spots on oh no pia congo barter, which is a very closely related ladybird. One of the main ways you can tell this lady about apart from similar species is the genitalia. And If you don't want to hear about this part, you can skip ahead to around 30 seconds.
So on the mail the tip of the lady bird's penis sticks out from the main body at around a 45 degree angle, whereas on oh no, p. A congo barta, That one has, its penis sticking out at an 80° angle And on yet another mountain species, Zootopia on Sina. It's more like a 90° angle for the penis. The penis of the ladybird has been described as being like a key which only fits into the lock I. E. The female genitalia of one species.
And if you want to know more about this, we're going to do a multi part episode tune on mating and reproduction can't get enough of this sort of thing. So unfortunately, as the ladybird is so newly discovered, I'm unable to find any information on what the larvae and puppy look like. It's actually not really known what they look like. They're very scarce and they haven't really found any of them.
However, with Zootopia congo barter, the lava has a black red and PCI pattern on its back with pinkish lines going down the middle of the lava and a pale white and pink abdominal segment towards the end of the abdomen. So this lava probably looks similar as they are very closely related, but I don't know for sure and I don't want to describe it wrongly.
The O. N. O. P. A larvae can look somewhat similar to another genius called propylene, which we'll talk about on an upcoming episode of the show as one of them is a very common ladybird in the UK, the 14th spot, they can be distinguished because the propriety ladybird larvae have a line going all the way down the larva is back, whereas the O. N. O. P. A. Ones that line turns into a series of dots around the top of the lava's abdomen before turning back into a line.
Again. The people of Zootopia congo barter is brown with a PCI line going down the middle of it. But as I've not seen a pupil of ono Piasecki hens is I can't really describe what it looks like. So if you listened to the description of the ladybird, what do you think is going on? So if you heard the description and thought of its two black spots and thought it sounded like a more common ladybird. Perhaps one you've seen. Perhaps maybe the two spots. You're absolutely right.
According to Betty, the ladybird has evolved to be a mimic of the two spot. Now there are two types of mimicry used in the animal world. These are military and mimicry and basin mimicry. Military and mimicry is when two or more animals which are usually well defended or foul tasting with common predators, evolved to resemble each other. Now you can find examples of this anywhere in the animal world.
If you look at wasps, bumblebees, poison arrow frogs, you can see that as they commonly resemble one another and signal to predators to keep well away. And sometimes other species through convergent evolution who are not related or not closely related can come to resemble them too. This is known as mullah rain mimicry rings. The other type of mimicry is Betsy and mimicry.
That's when a harmless species comes to resemble the warning signals and colors of a more dangerous one think of hover flies and wasps. Hover flies don't sting or cause any harm. But because of their yellow and black colors, predators keep away because they do actually resemble a wasp. Now in the case of Zootopia shirk who hens us. This lady bird has evolved to be a mulberry and mimic of the two spot a day earlier by Punk data. The spot pattern looks very similar or almost identical.
The ladybird evolved from its closest relative in the Oh no. P. A genus, the pink colored ladybird, Zootopia congo barter With the 80° Penis. And it's thought that geographical isolation beings of pathway up the mountain has led to these lady birds becoming a separate species. But then the story gets even stranger because there are no two spots found where Zootopia show consensus was found so high above sea level. In fact, it was actually the only lady bird found in that position.
So what's going on? It's possible although unlikely that Mallory and mimicry wasn't the cause of the spot pattern.
Perhaps the number of spots reduced for another reason, perhaps it was related to the climate and to add another twist to the story and a team of other researchers collected a number of two spots from orchards nearby to the mountains and these two spots had evolved a pink color not seen anywhere else in that species, the same pink color as Zootopia congo barter and unusual pro noted markings similar to the O. N. O. P. A lady birds, this form became known as F. Fassi, Otto punk daughter.
So that raises the question, what's happening here and what is actually mimicking what in an environment such as a mountain where it gets very cold. It does make sense for darker colored lady birds to survive rather than paler ones. But that actually hasn't been the case here. The form of the two spot that Owen opio Shoko hens is has mimicked is the typical form rather than the rather than the darker form so far. Oh no pee. A circle lenses is only found in a geographically isolated area.
It's only found in shinjuku and a handful of other close by mountains in Iran hasn't actually been found anywhere else. But its potential use as a biological control suggests that attempts might be made to use it for agricultural purposes. And while I don't actually have to hand an exact list of foods the ladybird eats, I'm sure you will be astonished to learn that it's been seen eating aphids. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I would like to thank Betty for the help that he gave me with it.
And please do look up the ladybird if you can. It looks amazing. And it's so fantastic that another lady bird has been discovered so recently and added to the over 6000 lady bird's already known about to discover a new species of ladybird is a fantastic achievement. And especially so when there is a shortage of anthropological books, resources and keys, identification and difficulty obtaining these things, ordering them online or raising money to buy them as there is in Iran.
A huge part of this is due to political reasons and issues between Iran and the USA and many websites such as go fund me don't actually accept fundraisers if money will be sent to Iran. As I found out the hard way I'm afraid even if it is to fund valuable scientific research. If you're interested, you can find out more info on Melody's instagram ladybugs dot ir or on his research page which I've included in the show notes along with all my other sources. So go check it out.
This lady bird seems like it's got so many more surprises to it and I'm sure there's much more to discover if you like this show and what to support me. You can follow me on Twitter at HWAB podcast or on Instagram 365. Ladybird. You can like my facebook page, Hinde wings and blood lust. If you want to contribute financially, you can buy me a coffee at www dot co dash fi dot com slash H W A B podcast. But if you can't afford to do this, you can leave a review on your podcast app.
Please subscribe on apple podcasts. Spotify, google podcasts. Ghana or wherever you get your podcasts. Music at the start of the show is by Deborah Torrance.