I'VE BEEN decongesting my laptop's jungle of files the other day when, lo and behold, I found this 05/18/2008 photo of beetles that fortunately survived multiple occasions of file migration, computer crash, accidental file deletion, changing laptops, misplaced thumb disks, and disorganized filing.
I googled for the scientific name of the May beetle. And, surprisingly, it is Phyllophaga spp only.
It was my first time to look up the scientific name of this type of beetle, one of my favorite insects (along with the cicada, the firefly, the dragonfly, and the grasshopper). Thus, the spp in the binomial surprised me because it is an abbreviation for the plural form of "species."
What this means is that there are several species of May beetle (also referred to as June beetle and June bug) and that "the actual species name cannot or need not or is not specified."
Indeed, during my student years at UP Los Baños, we used the abbreviation "sp." in our Dendrology (tree-identification) and Silviculture field classes in Mount Makiling when we came across a tree or shrub the family and genus of which we were sure of but do not know its exact species.
Hmmm... Mabuti pa kaming pangkaraniwang mamamayan, I said to myself. While May beetles may all look alike to beetle taxonomists, entomologists and/or the ones in charge of giving scientific names, at least we who caught and played with the insect when we were kids have more specific names.
For example, in my little corner as a beetle lover (as well as fan of The Beatles), I know such local names as abal-abal, simmawa, sibbaweng, arus-arus, sammi-sammi in Ilokano; e-ve, even si sompalo, gilang-gilang in Isinay; and salagubang, salagubang-puno, salaginto in Tagalog.
