Saint Helena earwig
| Saint Helena earwig | |
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| Preserved specimen with dislocated posterior | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Dermaptera |
| Family: | Labiduridae |
| Genus: | Labidura |
| Species: | L. herculeana |
| Binomial name | |
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Labidura herculeana (Fabricius, 1798) |
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| Location of Saint Helena | |
The Saint Helena earwig or Saint Helena giant earwig (Labidura herculeana) was a large species of earwig endemic to the oceanic island of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean. It is now considered extinct.
Growing as large as 84 mm (3.3 in) long (including forceps), the Saint Helena earwig was the world's largest earwig. It is shiny black with reddish legs, short elytra and no hind wings.
The earwig was endemic to Saint Helena, being found on the Horse Point Plain, Prosperous Bay Plain, and the Eastern Arid Area of the island. It was known to have lived in plain areas, gumwood forests and seabird colonies in rocky places. The earwig inhabited deep burrows, coming out only at night following rain. Dave Clark of the London Zoo said that "[t]he females make extremely good mothers".
The Saint Helena earwig was first discovered by Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius in 1798. It later became confused with the smaller and more familiar shore earwig Labidura riparia, and received little attention from science. It was all but forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1962 when two ornithologists, Douglas Dorward and Philip Ashmole, found some enormous dry tail pincers while searching for bird bones. They were given to zoologist Arthur Loveridge who confirmed they belonged to a form of huge earwig, and the species was named L. loveridgei.
In 1965, entomologists found live specimens in burrows under boulders in Horse Point Plain. While they were thought to be L. loveridgei, once examined they were found to be the same species as L. herculeana, and this was reinstated as their official scientific name. Other searches since the 1960s have not succeeded in finding the earwig, and it was allegedly last seen in 1967.
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