Two New Bug Species Have All-Pink Females

Meet Malaysia's new pink ladies: Two species of katydid whose females sport distinctly rosy hues.

While the males of the new species are a uniform green color, the females are standouts in red and pink. Not only that, both sexes look just like leaves, with distinctive veins and leaf-like lobes on their legs. (Also see a new species of spider that looks like a leaf.)

The insects, which live in northern Borneo (map), are especially unusual because one of them was identified based on photographs alone.

In 2013, a friend showed George Beccaloni pictures of a spectacularly colored katydid—a type of grasshopper-like insect—that Beccaloni couldn’t identify. Beccaloni sent them to Sigfrid Ingrisch, an expert on Asian katydids.

“He was reluctant to name and describe it because it’s not good practice to describe new species based only on photos,” says Beccaloni, a zoologist at London's Natural History Museum. “Often you need to look at microscopic characteristics, things that don’t show up in photos, to differentiate species.”-read more