Insect experts bugged by garden find
World renowned bug experts from the Natural History Museum have been left baffled by one which was found in their own garden.
The NHM is home to more than 28 million bug specimens and is the world leader in the field - so it must come as a embarrassment to admit they can't identify a bug they found in the museum gardens.
The tiny red-and-black bug appeared on trees at the site last year and is about the size of a grain of rice. Now there are hundreds of them.
Experts trying to identify the creature checked the new bug with those in the Museum's national insect collection but amazingly, there is no exact match.
"It seems strange that so many of these bugs should suddenly appear," says Max Barclay, one of the Museum's insect experts.
"With international trade and climate change, several new insects are showing up in London every year. Some of the invaders come from southern Europe, but others are from as far away as Australia. The fauna of the city is changing all the time now."
The bug closely resembles the fairly rare species Arocatus roeselii, which is usually found in central Europe. However, the roeselii bugs are brighter red than this new bug and they are usually associated with alder trees rather than plane trees.
The Museum is working with international colleagues to analyse the bug's body shape, form and DNA to see whether it is a newly discovered species.
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It is some kind of Hemipteran but I'm sure they already knew that.
It looks like the common Box Elder Bug.