Whats Brown and Sticky? No that's disgusting, i'm talking about stick insects. The article i am reviewing below is all about a newly discovered genus of stick insects. So read it, "stick" at it or ill give you "stick" about it.

An enigmatic new stick insect from the Philippine Islands by Marco Gottardo and Philipp Heller.

The abstract of the article focuses mainly on the new features that this genus of stick insect exhibit. Many features are described briefely here to make the difference clear. The genus is called Conlephasma. After just reading the abstract i found out quite a lot about this genus. The most interesting thing i think is the fact that they are ground dwelling insects. This is very cool, imagine walking along and all of a sudden a stick walks across your shoe - Awesome!!! They are also flightless so what i wonder is why they weren't found sooner! To add to all that they have very distinct and vivid colours, they look amazing - see picture below.

The article talks about the Phillippine archipelago, this is where the new stick insects were discovered. It is the second hottest biodiversity hotspot on earth. The type specimens were preserved and pinned in many collections around Europe.

Within the discussion of the article there are several main sections describing different aspects of the species. The first section describes male morphology. The main things i should point out is that they are considerably small in size, bright orange in colour and the head is longer than it is wide. The next section describes female morphology. The main difference being that they are considerably larger and broader than males and they are a bright olive green colour. The egg morphology is described in the next section. They are dark brown in colour and are about 4mm long.

The entire article is written and structured very well. It is very detailed and very easy to read. It sums up by stating the uniqueness of the newly discovered genus.

The reference for this article:

Marco Gottardo, Philipp Heller, An enigmatic new stick insect from the Philippine Islands (Insecta: Phasmatodea), Comptes Rendus Biologies, Volume 335, Issue 9, September 2012, Pages 594-601.

The article can be read at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069112001643

I think that article was:

For more about stick insects visit:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/stick-insect/