<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><item href="/news/beetles-biodiversity-and-battlestar-galactica.aspx" dsn="blogs"><homehero>true</homehero><unit>Faculty &amp; Staff,Research,College of Natural Science</unit><pubDate>06/16/2021</pubDate><title>Beetles, biodiversity and 'Battlestar Galactica'</title><description><p>The original Star Trek television series took place in a future when space is the final frontier, but humanity hasn’t reached that point quite yet. As researchers like MSU entomologists Sarah Smith and Anthony Cognato are reminding us, there’s still plenty to discover right here on Earth. Working in Central and South America, the duo discovered more than three dozen species of ambrosia beetles — beetles that eat ambrosia fungus — previously unknown to science. Smith and Cognato described these new species on June 16  in the journal ZooKeys and named some after iconic sci-fi heroines.</p></description><author/><hero-image><img src="https://natsci.msu.edu/sites/_natsci/cache/file/7C072BC5-5276-4BBF-B75BF998C7C0CEB8_newsarticlehero.jpg" alt="Hero image"/></hero-image><image><img src="https://natsci.msu.edu/sites/_natsci/cache/file/7C072BC5-5276-4BBF-B75BF998C7C0CEB8_medium.jpg" alt="Hero image"/></image><tags><tag>biodiversity</tag><tag>faculty</tag><tag>research</tag></tags></item>