AQIS officer makes history
Mark Whattam (OSP Senior Manager),
Luke Watson, Katarina Graljuk display
information about their special discovery.
The Melbourne-based AQIS officer who intercepted a thrips species previously unknown in the scientific world has been rewarded with the highest honour—the insect has been named after her.
Katarina Graljuk discovered tiny insects clinging to fresh plant leaf Catha edulis, commonly known as Khat, imported by the Australian African community in 2008.
When Katarina presented the insects to AQIS’s entomologists, they were stumped. They knew they were thrips but they didn’t know what species.
The entomologists engaged the help of leading CSIRO thrips taxonomist and ex-curator of the British Natural History Museum, Dr Laurence Mound, who quickly identified them as ‘something new’. After extensive liaison with other world thrips experts, Dr Mound published a scientific paper detailing the new thrips and described the origin of the new thrips’ name Kenyattathrips katarinae.
The new names reflect the Kenyan origin of the specimens studied, and the contribution of Katarina Graljuk who first intercepted the species in Australia, and who, with her colleagues at the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, help prevent invasive organisms from entering and harming Australian agriculture and ecosystems1.
Katarina is chuffed with the name.
‘It’s very exciting to have been part of history in the making, and it was all in a day’s work!’ said Katarina.
Thrips are the bain of the horticulture and nursery industries—they not only suck the sap of plants but are also vectors for tospoviruses, causing millions of dollars damage each year.
Katarina joins an elite group of people who have insects named after them: the Caloplaca obamae is an orange lichen named after Barack Obama; the Avahi cleesei is a woolly lemur named after John Cleese; and Agathidium vaderi is a slime mold beetle named after Darth Vader.
1 Mound, L.A. (2009) A new genus and species of Scirtothrips genus-group (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) from Kenya, intercepted by Australian quarantine Zootaxa 2210: 65–68 (http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2009/f/z02210p068f.pdf)
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