When working as Assistant Superintendent at the Indian Museum, Calcutta, Dr. Gravely conducted pioneering classification work on the family Passalidae.
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It notably contain insects, Arachnida and Myriapoda from limestone caves in Burma (1911), and oriental Passalidae.
Found, among other places, in the guts of passalid beetles, S. stipitis is capable of both aerobic and oxygen limited fermentation, and has the highest known natural ability of any yeast to directly ferment xylose, converting it to ethanol, a potentially economically valuable trait.