Joshua Oliva will have a hard time topping the Mother's Day gift he found for his mom when they hiked near Topanga Canyon in May: a new species of firefly.
The recent University of California, Riverside graduate's discovery was confirmed as a new species by school officials this week, and though the formal naming process for the firefly could take a few years, 24-year-old Oliva already has someone in mind for the honor.
"I wouldn’t want it named after me, I'd want it to be named after my mom," Oliva said. "She's the only reason I was even out there hiking on Mother's Day, so if I had the opportunity I would have it named after her."
Though Oliva graduated in May with a degree in history, he's been interested in insects since his freshman year of college, and during the hike had been searching for some of the hundreds of insects he needed to collect for an entomology class project.
Oliva said he knew right away that the firefly, which is about a half-centimeter long with a black body, orange "halo" and small organ at the tip of its tail, was unlike any he'd seen before.
"That was the first insect that my eyes automatically went to," Oliva said. "So if anyone sees an insect with something similar, they’ll know what they're seeing is a firefly. They're rare here, some of my friends and family have never even seen a firefly, so that’s exciting."
Oliva brought the insect to the be identified at the UC Riverside entomology museum, where senior museum scientist Doug Yanega told Oliva the firefly was a species that had not been previously categorized, an assessment confirmed by experts at the University of Florida.
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"Doug had a pretty good idea right away that this was a new species," Oliva said. "He told me I'd made a very exciting discovery."
Though UC Riverside researchers discover dozens of new insect species each year, Oliva's discovery is notable because such finds are typically not made by undergraduate students, Yanega said.
"We discover new species here all the time, it's almost routine," Yanega said. "People are surprised that there can be new species literally right under their nose."
The discovery is also unusual because many new insect species are not identified until after the insect has been sitting in a collection for a decade or more, Yanega said.
Oliva, who grew up in Guatemala and moved to the United States as a 9-year-old, said the discovery has opened his eyes to how much work remains to be done in the field of entomology, and plans to apply to study the subject in graduate school at UCR.
"I’ve always wanted to be an entomologist," Oliva said. "Discovering a new species is something I’ve always dreamed of doing."
