A master of camouflage successfully "pretended" to be another species for decades, even in the eyes of entomologists.
A study by a team from the University of Sydney (led by Braxton Jones) published on 21 September 2026 in the journal Austral Entomology. The scientists revised the Australian members of the genus Anchiale — large winged stick insects. Previously it was thought that there were only two species, but it turned out there are five:
- Anchiale albopunctata (restored to the status of a separate species after more than a century of being synonymized with another),
- A. briareus,
- A. mabiensis (new),
- A. robusta (new),
- A. spinicollis.
The biggest "impostor" is Anchiale robusta. For decades (at least since the 1970s) it was mistaken for an already known species, even though it is quite large: females reach 16,2 cm. It lives in the coastal tropical forests of Queensland (from Tully roughly 450 km north to areas north of Cooktown). It was often photographed and even bred, but was correctly identified only now — thanks to DNA (the mitochondrial gene COXI), museum collections, field collections, citizen science data (more than 1000 observations in iNaturalist and the Atlas of Living Australia) and the study of eggs.
The second new species is Anchiale mabiensis. It is smaller and more slender (females about 11,5–12 cm), and is so far known only from the critically endangered Mabi tropical forest on the Atherton Tableland. Its eggs are indeed unusual: on the "little cap" (operculum) there is an internal ring-like structure that has not previously been found in stick insects or their closest relatives. When hatching, this cap detaches.
The ranges have now turned out to be far narrower than thought, which is important for conservation — especially for the species from the Mabi forest. In addition, it emerged that the "plague" population outbreaks, when stick insects strip trees bare, may belong to different species.
A classic case: even among Australia's most conspicuous and frequently photographed insects, undescribed (or misidentified) species are still hiding. Stick insects are especially good at this — their main superpower is precisely what has helped them remain "invisible" to science.
