Rough Groove

Ongoing redesign of salagubang.net

I’m redesigning all the pages of salagubang.net, my dedicated beetle site that was launched around five years ago. Its quite daunting and bloody especially that this is my oldest website done in Frontpage. Now, I’m updating every page to cascading style sheets (CSS) from tables to make it more manageable and future redesigns would not be so difficult and time consuming. Now with Dreamweaver, updating it is quite easy.

Other than the redesign, I’m also overhauling all images, 1,126 all in all, to make it better visually as well as placing watermarks. The thumbnail was also enlarged to 200px from the original 100px.

As of now, I’m still not halfway into the revamp but I am just doing it slowly but surely. There will still be a lot of dead links but these will all be ironed out once done.

salagubang.net overhaul

Salagubang.net is my first attempt at building a website and it was the reason why I bought a digital camera (Canon Powershot G5) in the first place. Now, I’m doing a major makeover. First, I added a blog to it so that I can post additional information about my beetles and Philippine Coleoptera in general that is so lacking in the gallery site. The blog is the perfect vehicle for this kind of info since it has permalinks, ping, rss feed and comments. Second, I am migrating the old pages entirely to WordPress. I admit that its a bit daunting since it involves around hundreds of pages but I’m already starting it with a local install. Because of this makeover, I’m doing away with some of the parts like the feature, exchange and what’s new.

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A new beetle species

I just got a confirmation email from my Italian entomologist friend, Fabio Cassola: the tiger beetle species, shown at left, collected many years ago in Bukidnon (while the rest of the specimens in the forested mountains of Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental) is new to Science! As he wrote in an email before, the nearest relative can be found in the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia which is way too far to be the same species here in the country.

Fabio will describe this species in a scientific journal, date of publication not given, and will name it Calomera cabigasi. Hehehe, another new beetle under my name.

Check out also the gallery page where the above photo can be found with the label Calomera sp. 1 at my salagubang site. Another page, under FEATURES lists some of the cerambycid (longhorn) beetles that I have contributed to Science can be found here.

4 new Philippine beetle species

In the no. 49 issue of Les cahier Magellanes (France, 2005), my Catalan entomologist friend Eduard Vives published his first part survey of new and interesting Cerambycidae beetles from the Philippines and in it he described four new species that I have contributed, all from Bukidnon province, Mindanao.

Aliboron bukidnoni sp. nov. a new species from Mindanao. This genus is also new for the country. Its somewhat a very intersting beetle and its elytral (wings) patterns is reminiscent of the following species: Blepephaeus mindanaonis SCHULTZE, 1920, Pericycos philippensis BREUNING, 1944, and Blepephaeus sp. Its really quite intriguing that theis pattern occurs in different species. Does this serve as somewhat of a protection?

Cereopsius cabigasi sp. nov. also another interesting species. One can mistakenly see this as another Cereopsius sp. that Eduard considers a new species.

Epipedocera cabigasiana sp. nov., ha, just loved the way that name sounds: CABIGASIANA. Its a very small longhorn beetle, almost a centemeter long that can only be collected up high on flowering trees.

Nidella stanleyi sp. nov. this is another new species whose occurence is new for the country. Its nearest relative or species of the same genus can be found in Vietnam. Like the E. cabigasiana sp. nov., it can only be collected high up on flowering trees.

These are the paratype labels that were sent to me by Eduard. Once a specimen is labeled a paratype, it means that it is one of the specimens used in making the scientific descriptions. If anything happens to the holotype, or main specimen that the author described the species, the paratypes can then be elevated to the status of holotype.

Related posts:

Nidella stanleyi VIVES, 2005
Epipedocera cabigasiana VIVES, 2005

Prionid beetle in Bulacan

While doing a shot of the church of Angat in Bulacan, I was just slightly distracted by a moving thing along the church ground and, lo, and behold, a not so common male prionid (Subfamily Prioninae, Family Cerambycidae, Coleoptera) struggling to get back on its feet after perhaps falling to the ground and landing on its back. Unfortunately for this insect, its now in my collection.

By the way, I’ll be in Iloilo this morning (0500H flight!) and then on to Bacolod City for the the Masskara Festival that I’ve always been wanting to see and now’s the time. After that, back to Iloilo for a day before going to Cuyo Is. and Culion Is. in Palawan for the Palawan leg of my photo assignment.