A walk to pick up his children at school turned into an exciting discovery of a new dung beetle species for Hartbeespoort resident and entomologist Christian Deschodt (50).

Christian Deschodt (50) (Photo: Marius Deschodt)

Deschodt, a doctoral student at the University of Pretoria, has been studying dung beetles for the past twenty years. The discovery was pure luck. “But I must say, I always walk with my eyes on the ground, looking, and on this particular day, I noticed the small dung beetle among ants. I picked it up and very carefully carried it to school and then back home. Under a microscope, I realised this was a female of a new species not previously documented.”
News about the newly discovered species, Hathoronthophagus spinosa, was announced in Zootaxa, a scientific journal that specialises in updates about the discovery of new species. “I named her after “Hathor”, an ancient Egyptian deity associated with joy, love, women and fertility.”
He believes this particular species may possibly live in ant nests. “Not all dung beetles eat dung. Some eat mushrooms, some centipedes, some eat rotten meat, and others live with ants. We don’t know what the relationship between the ant and dung beetle is. I believe the dung beetle may provide a mutually beneficial service to ants,” he says.
Since the discovery, he has not been able to find more specimens of Hathoronthophagus spinosa in Hartbeespoort.
There are approximately 500 species of dung beetle in South Africa and over 700 throughout southern Africa.
This was just one of two new species discovered by Deschodt, who has been involved in the discovery and description of more than 50 dung beetle species over the past 20 years. He also documented another new species, Onthophagus pragtig, which most likely only feeds on the innards of dead millipedes.

Hathoronthophagus spinosa