On our trip to the beautiful Ulu Temburong National Park in Brunei, we found several new species of beetle. A new species of flea beetle was found in the leaf litter and named Clavicornaltica belalongensis – after Belalong river in which vicinity it was found.

We enjoyed the fantastic nature of Durmitor National Park, explored mountains, canyons, and descended into caves in search of new species. Our molecular biology team led by Massimo Delledonne with Marta Paterno and Simone Maestri performed for the first time ever, DNA sequencing in a cave! Guided by our team leader and cave biologist Iva Njunjić, our team hiked high up the mountain to reach the cave entrance and crawled through narrow passages with the portable DNA lab. We set up a complete lab in the cave and used a novel device from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the VOLTRAX system which replaces a thermocycler, an incubator and a shaker, allowing for much easier and compact DNA library preparation. Combined with a housemade centrifuge and the MinION sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, we were able to extract and sequence DNA in a few hours in a totally hostile environment. This is certainly the first time ever this was attempted and we are very proud of this achievement. Part of the work in the “cave lab” was done by citizen scientist Mariela González.