| Zyzzyva | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Coleoptera |
| Suborder: | Polyphaga |
| Superfamily: | Curculionoidea |
| Family: | Curculionidae |
| Genus: | Zyzzyva Casey, 1922 |
| Species | |
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Zyzzyva ( /ˈzɪzɨvə/) is a genus of tropical American weevil often found in association with palms. It is a snouted beetle. "Zyzzyva" is the last word in many English-language dictionaries.
The yellowish weevil is no longer than an ant. It was first discovered in 1922 in Brazil, and named by a Irishman Thomas Lincoln Casey, Jr. An entomologist at New York's Museum of Natural History thought that, because there was not a Latin name or Brazilian name associated with this weevil, it was probably named Zyzzyva as a practical joke to place it in a prominent ending position in many guides and manuals.[1]
Thomas Casey describes "Zyzzyva Ochreotecta" in his book Memoirs on the Coleoptera, Volume 10:[2]
Rather broadly oblong-oval, convex, densely clothed with scales, orchreous and very uniform above, completely concealing the sculpture. Beak scarcely longer than the prothorax, thick, distincly [sic?] acurate, compressed basally, finely, closely punctate, longitudinally furrowed and carinate above. Antennae obscure rufous; prothorax two-fifths wider than long, the sides parallel and nearly straight in basal two-fifths, thence oblique and nearly straight to the apex, which is truncate and much less than half as wide as the base; parallel scales dense and directed longitudinally in great part; elytra a third longer than wide, a fifth or sixth wider than the prothorax and nearly two and one-half times as long, the sides parallel, broadly, circularly rounded in apical third, the sutural angle not reentrant; pygidium closely but not densely clothed with slender and suberect pale squamules; under surface without sexual mark, the first ventral suture fine but very distinct throughout, the others coarse, the fourth not reflexed at the sides. It has a length of 4.3mm and a width of 2.0mm. Nothing else known at present approaches this genus closely in general habitus, except the next [Polpones] in some features.
He collected only one specimen.