Another museum expedition has just returned from Peru. There's two that we've found so far that we think have very, very high likelihood of being completely new species. Right. And the planet. Max Barclay has been looking at the insect life on the forest floor and is now combing through his discoveries. This is a beetle called boboserated, and they live on underground truffles. The expensive things that you get in a restaurant? Exactly. I can't remember what they cost but it's an awful lot of money. There's one species in France that actually competes with the locals for the very valuable white and black truffles. We don't know exactly what kind of truffles this feeds on, but some kind of subterranean fungus. Great. In the rainforest. You've discovered, hopefully, a new species of beetle here. Is there anything else you're interested that you just discovered? No, we've had some very interesting things. I mean, the guys we were working with from America were ecologists and they were looking at dung beetle ecology. These are dung beetles, because we all know what dung beetles eat, they eat poo, dung, faecal matter. They do a good job as well, don't they? Yes. They're very important in ecosystems because they clean up all the waste, and many of them are very specific about where they live. They live in a particular altitude. They live in a lowland tropical forests or live on Altiplano whatever. And what was interesting about this ecology group is that they were collecting the dung beetles and they were comparing it with data that they collected in the same place ten years ago.


博物馆的另一支科考队刚从秘鲁返回，目前发现的物种中有两种。我们认为极有可能是新物种，马克斯·巴克莱致力于研究林褥中的昆虫，如今正在梳理自己的发现，这种甲虫叫做鲍氏甲虫[译注:学名原文缺失，故音译]以地下松露为食。 就是餐馆里非常贵的那个松露 -正是。我不记得确切的价格，总之很贵。法国也有这样一种甲虫，与当地人争食，极为珍贵的黑白松露。我们尚不清楚这种甲虫以哪种松露为食，但可以肯定是热带雨林的地下菌类。 你发现了这种有可能是新物种的甲虫，还有别的发现吗？ 我们还发现一件趣事，有些美国生态学家和我们共事。他们当时在研究蜣螂生态学，这些就是蜣螂。众所周知，蜣螂以粪便等排泄物为食。 它们很尽职对吗 是的，它们对生态环境意义重大。因为它们清理排泄物，多数蜣螂只在特定环境中生存，比如只在特定的海拔出现，低地热带森林，或者高原之类。这群生物学家做了件有意思的事，他们把收集到的蜣螂与十年前同地采集的数据对比。