Critically Endangered
Dryococelus
Dryococelus australis
Dryococelus is an insect in the family Phasmatidae (order Phasmida) — Dryococelus australis, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to Australia.
The insect
Dryococelus is an insect in the family Phasmatidae (order Phasmida) — Dryococelus australis.
Range and habitat
Dryococelus, also known as the Lord Howe Island stick insect, Lord Howe Island phasmid or, locally, as the tree lobster, is a stick insect that lives in the Lord Howe Island Group.
The ultimate goal was to produce a large population for reintroduction to Lord Howe Island, provided that a project to eradicate the invasive rats was successful. In 2008, when Jane Goodall visited the zoo, the population had grown to 11,376 eggs and 700 individuals, 20 of that were soon after returned to a special habitat on Lord Howe Island.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The nymphs are first bright green and active during the day, but as they mature, they turn black and become nocturnal.
In crisis
Thought to be extinct by 1920, it was rediscovered in 2001. Although it had been extirpated from Lord Howe itself, a remnant population of 24 individuals was rediscovered on the sea stack of Ball's Pyramid. In 2006, the captive population of insects numbered about 50 individuals, with thousands of eggs still to hatch.
By the beginning of 2016, Melbourne Zoo had hatched 13,000 eggs, and had also sent eggs to the Bristol Zoo in England, the San Diego Zoo in the United States, and the Toronto Zoo in Canada, to establish distinct insurance populations. In 2018, it was announced that the CEO of the Lord Howe Island Board had approved a plan to exterminate the black rat population on Lord Howe Island to protect the island ecology and potentially reintroduce D. Australis.
Dryococelus is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Dryococelus, Wikidata item Q152856. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
