You may have noted, we have not posted in quite some time. We have taken the last year to re-center, to recuperate emotionally from a lot of stuff and to start some new projects. As you might know, Kelly is a scientist studying biodiversity in a larger context. Specifically, Kelly has engaged in a study of the species of Dytiscidae (diving beetles) of the state of New Mexico. So, during summer and autumn, 2025, we spent a lot of our time collecting habitats for diving beetles throughout the great state of New Mexico.
This included some incredible visits to sites in the northern mountains, to the the southwest and southeast, to areas poorly collected for aquatic insects in general. The results of this are that we now have something like 101 species in the family Dytiscidae from the state of New Mexico with 27 (or about 30%) of the species new records for the state. This is an incredible testament to the wonderful lack of knowledge of the biodiversity of this great state of New Mexico, which is an under collected region of the world. Some of the species now known from the state extend the known range of species by something like 400–600km.
This is not entirely surprising for our knowledge of arthropod biodiversity. In our time of seeking life on other planets, our knowledge of the species diversity on our own planet is extremely limited and need considerable investigation.
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