Tropical forests are home to some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Among tropical organisms, parasitic insects remain an understudied group. The family Hippoboscidae, first described by Samuel in 1819, includes over 213 species. These flies are obligate blood-sucking ectoparasites of mammals and birds, and serve as vectors of various diseases. They can act as specialized vectors for blood parasites such as Haemoproteus and trypanosomes. The genus Icosta (Speiser, 1905), is the largest in the Hippoboscidae, with approximately 53–65 species. It is divided into five subgenera: Ardmoeca (Maa, 1969), Gypoeca (Maa, 1969), Icosta (Speiser, 1905), Ornithoponus (Aldrich, 1923) and Rhyponotum (Maa, 1969). Species of the subgenus Icosta are found in subtropical and tropical regions of Asia, Oceania and Africa.
In Vietnam, only one species of bloodsucker associated with mammals has been described to date, and relatively few species associated with birds have been found.
A joint study by researchers from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEE RAS), Lomonosov Moscow State University and colleagues from the Southern Branch of the Joint Vietnamese-Russian Center for Tropical Research and Technology has described a new species, Icosta korzuni sp. n., collected from the Lesser Spur-winged Cuckoo Centropus bengalensis (Gmelin, JF, 1788) in Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam. The new species differs from known species of the subgenus Icosta in its body size and coloration, the arrangement of microtrichia on the wings and the morphology of the third latrite (part of the abdominal exoskeleton). The species is named after the first Director General of the Joint Russian-Vietnamese Tropical Research and Technology Center, Leonid Petrovich Korzun, who actively supported research in the field of tropical ecology and biodiversity.
The study was supported by the Joint Vietnam-Russia Tropical Research Center. The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant RSF-FWO 20-44-01005).
The work was published in the journal International Journal for Parasitology: Aleksandra Yatsuk, Emilia Nartshuk, Andrey Bushuev, Anvar Kerimov, Nguyễn Văn Linh, Oleg Tolstenkov, Alexandr Matyukhin, Description of a new species of Icosta Speiser , 1905 (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) from Southern Vietnam with the updated key to the subgenus Icosta, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife, Volume 25, P 101026, 2024.