Species of Insect Named for ESU Professor

East Stroudsburg University Biology Professor Matthew S. Wallace gained a bit of immortality recently and it comes with six legs, four wings and a talent for disguising itself.

The newly named Selenacentrus Wallacei is a type of treehopper insect that was discovered by two entomologists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Brendan O. Morris and Dr. Christopher H. Dietrich named the genus of the new treehopper after the late Latin singer Selena Quintanilla, who was known as the Queen of Tejano Music. But the species moniker, “Wallacei,” is named for Dr. Matthew Wallace because the scientists used the ESU professor’s research to help in the insect’s identification.

“I was so flattered and surprised and honored,” Wallace said. “I never thought that would happen, so it’s just a really nice thing.”

Maria Kitchens-Kintz, Ph.D., chair of biology, said the tribute is fitting because Wallace is a highly respected professor of Biology and “a world leader in the field of treehopper insects.”

“We are very pleased that someone outside of ESU has named a new species of treehoppers after him,” Dr. Kitchens-Kintz said. “This speaks volumes about Dr. Wallace’s influence in this field, and the enormous respect Dr. Dietrich and Mr. Morris have for him as well.”

Morris said they sought to “recognize his invaluable contributions to treehopper taxonomy, particularly the subfamily Centrotinae, to which this species belongs. Without his comprehensive systematic treatment of the subfamily – his Ph.D. work – the peculiarities of this new genus would’ve been much harder to find.”

For Wallace’s doctoral dissertation, which was published in book form in 2004, he provided numerous descriptions and illustrations of different types of treehoppers.

“That book helped Chris and Brendan out a lot in making their decision to call this a new treehopper that they had collected in Texas and Northern Mexico,” Wallace said. “So I kind of put the outline out there.”

Selenacentrus Wallacei is brown and has what looks like a hood covering its body. Treehoppers sit on plants and suck the sap of the plant but they don’t really do much damage to agriculture, Wallace said.

“Their form is so interesting,” Wallace said. “Depending on the treehopper they can assume the shape of a leaf, of a thorn, of another insect like an ant, there’s so many different things. It’s apparently a way to hide from predators, like a type of mimicry or camouflage.”

Wallace said thousands of insects are identified each year. Those who discover them can be pretty creative in naming them, often simply adding “i” to the end of a name to “Latinize” it. Historically, Latin was the language of science and Latin names are given for species so that scientists of different languages can use the same common name for each creature.

“Sometimes people will name it after their favorite rock band,” Wallace said. “There’s a new species of louse. Somebody had found a louse that the head looked like Darth Vader’s helmet, so they called it Vaderi.”

The number of people nationwide and abroad who study treehoppers is fairly small so researchers in the field meet each year for a camping trip in Maryland to collect species and exchange information and ideas.

Dietrich, a University of Illinois professor, is a leader in the field and Morris’s mentor. Wallace said he met Morris, a graduate student, about five years ago at one of the treehopper gatherings. The Selenacentrus Wallacei was described in an article by Morris and Dietrich in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

“It’s very exciting to discover something new as it provides an additional piece to the evolutionary puzzle,” Morris said.

By classifying these insects, scientists can better study them and where they fit into the ecosystem, Wallace said.

“If you’re talking about ecosystem health and health of the environment, treehoppers are definitely a food for other animals, other insects, birds and lizards,” he said .

Wallace himself has named newly discovered species of treehoppers, including one for a treehopper collector about a year ago.

“He’s a guy in Costa Rica who sends me all these pictures when he finds these things and I determined that one of the pictures he sent me was new, that I had never seen it before,” Wallace said. “I named it after him because he had done so much work and it was such a great contribution.”

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