Discoveries Unleashed: 153 New Beetle Species from China

In a massive 813-page fully open-access special volume of Zootaxa published today, a team of 127 coleopterists from 48 institutions described 153 new species of beetles from China, with 105 of them collected from the Nanling Priority Area for Biodiversity Conservation (https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5528.1). This volume is organized by the Coleopterology Committee of the Entomological Society of China in celebration of the 10th anniversary of this Committee. It presents a collection of 50 papers with a focus on descriptions of new beetle species, achieving high academic standards with the help of 86 international reviewers. Zootaxa’s main mission is to overcome the ‘taxonomic impediment’ by helping taxonomists to rapidly document the world’s undiscovered and undescribed animal species. We commend the Chinese coleopterists for their tremendous effort in producing this extensive volume in English and making it available as open access. We welcome similar team efforts by taxonomists from other regions of the world to accelerate descriptions of unknown species from their biodiversity hotspots.

Zhi-Qiang Zhang: Chief editor, Zootaxa

23 October 2024