The insect has been christened after the famed Swedish botanist Carl von Linné and is a new member of the longhorn beetle family, according to the Upsala Nya Tidning.
Part of the reason the new beetle, Leiopus linnei, is only now being classified as its own species is because it bears a striking resemblance to the black-clouded longhorn beetle, Leiopus nebulosus, according to Henrik Wallin, an entomologist with the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK) in Uppsala.
“It’s nice to be done with it. It’s taken a very long time to convince all the skeptics that this is a new species,” he told the newspaper.
The final proof that the Linné longhorn beetle was in fact a new species came following genetic testing performed on the beetle’s larvae.
“People often say that the division between two species is a genetic difference of about two percent,” said Wallin.
“Our analysis show that the black-clouded longhorn beetle and the Linné longhorn beetle differ genetically by 12 percent.”
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