At a time when habitat loss and climate change threaten countless species, the discovery of a new species of parasitic wasp - named ‘Losgna Occidentalis’ from Chandigarh has drawn attention to the unexplored richness of India’s biodiversity.
A recent study published in Zootaxa, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for animal taxonomists, titled - ‘Rediscovery and description of a new species of Losgna (Cameron 1903): reviving a forgotten ichneumonid genus (Darwin wasps) in India’ - points out the rediscovery of the Losgna genus in India, after close to six decades, and describes “a new species collected from an urban dry scrub forest in Chandigarh.”
“The solitary Losgna (wasp) specimen was collected from a windowsill in Chandigarh, during winter 2023–24. This locality marks the first time any new insect species has been formally described from Chandigarh. The specimen belongs to a parasitic wasp (family Ichneumonidae), a group known for laying eggs inside or on other arthropod hosts. Prior to this discovery, Losgna had not been recorded in India since Heinrich’s 1965 monograph. No records, specimens or published literature on Losgna existed in any Indian institution after 1965. It appeared that the genus had vanished entirely from its once‐documented range in northeast India until we found this new specimen in Chandigarh,” Karmannye Chaudhary, who led the study, a researcher in bird ecology and insect taxonomy at the Queen Mary University of London, told The Hindu.
