Déja vu from New Guinea

It is almost four years from the expedition to New Guinea, where the faculty member Martin Bláha took place. The expedition already described a new troglobitic crayfish species Cherax acherontis, the first in the South hemisphere. Later on, the suspicious cockroach was identified in samples taken in the cave, and now the description of a new troglobitic cockroach species named Nocticola baumi was published. Thanks to Jiří Patoka from CULS and cooperation with Philipinian and Indonesian colleagues who provided morphological and genetic analysis. This species completes the distributional area of the genus Nocticola linking Asia and Australia. Moreover, the naming of the new species is symbolic of Dr. Jiří Baum, Czech zoologist, explorer, photographer, writer and a significant contributor to the National Muzeum in Prague. Before the start of the Second World War, he returned to the Czech Republic from his expedition from South Africa and became a part of anti-Nazi resistance. Unfortunately, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and went through a concentration camp in Terezín and Auschwitz. He was executed or died from blood poisoning in Warsaw a year later. He had planned the expedition to New Guinea, but he never made it. Therefore, the new species was named in his honour.