From my iNaturalist email:
Weevil rediscovered after being thought extinct for decades
There’s hope in the midst of a rapidly worsening biodiversity crisis, and it comes with a very long snout: the Greater Chestnut Weevil. There were once nearly four billion American Chestnut trees across the eastern United States. But in 1904, a fungus arrived and caused chestnut blight, killing most of these trees. By the 1960s, American Chestnuts were practically gone … and with them (or so we thought), the Greater Chestnut Weevil. However, in September 2022, Neal Kelso shared a photo on iNaturalist of a Greater Chestnut Weevil happily hanging out on a blight-resistant hybrid chestnut. “This rediscovery wouldn’t have been possible without the observations of volunteers and the digital tools that connect their data to scientists,” said University of Memphis researcher Michael A. Charles. “It shows how anyone with a smartphone can help us detect species at risk of coextinction and make a real contribution to biodiversity research and conservation.”
