Because the “Save the Bees” marketing campaign gained nationwide traction within the Nineties, scientists have made vital strides in conserving susceptible bee species — and cataloged startling new discoveries alongside the way in which.
Amongst new species of honeybees, leaf-cutting bees, and ground-nesting bees, one peculiar species from the miner bee household stands aside from the remainder: the Andrena androfovea.
And that’s as a result of the identify of this sparkly, metallic blue-green bee species primarily boils all the way down to the nickname “eyeliner boy.”
In a paper for Ecology and Evolution, researchers on the College of Oklahoma recognized the bee, breaking down all the things from the bee’s genome sequencing to its favourite flowers.
In a brand new interview with the Texas Normal, paper co-author James Hung mentioned that the bee was first sighted years in the past.
Nonetheless, it took over three a long time to gather knowledge and “formally introduce” the species to scientific file.
“Our senior writer on this research, Dr. Jack Neff, has been the Texas bee guru for many years now, and he was the primary one to have noticed it many, a few years in the past, again earlier than the flip of the millennium, really,” Hung defined.
“But it surely wasn’t till extra just lately that we put all of the items collectively to present a extra complete image of the place this species matches within the normal family tree of the genus Andrena and the way it lives its life.”
Hung, who’s an assistant professor of biology on the College of Oklahoma, mentioned that the brand new “little blue bee” — which is native to Texas and Oklahoma — has two “particular traits.”
“First is that the males have a fovea, or moderately a pair of fovea, one inside every eye. And the fovea is a fuzzy construction which you can virtually consider as eyeliners,” Hung famous.
“They appear to serve presumably related capabilities as human eyeliners do: to sign our attractiveness to the alternative gender.”
So what units this new bee aside from the remainder? Male Andrena very not often have foveas like their feminine counterparts.
“And that’s why we named this bee androfovea as its species identify, with ‘andro’ that means ‘male’ in Greek,” Hung reasoned.
“So in case you had been to colloquialise its identify into modern-day slang, it is likely to be, you recognize, ‘eyeliner boy.’”
One other notable attribute of the Andrena androfovea, Hung identified, was their peculiar pollen-collecting conduct.
“[They] solely acquire pollen from a few members of the nightshade household,” he mentioned.
Most animals, like deer and sheep, usually keep away from nightshade flowers, which include a poisonous precept known as solanine which may compromise an animal’s gastrointestinal and nervous methods — however choose bees and butterflies have been documented pollinating them to no sick impact.
And with regards to pollinating nightshade, the “eyeliner boy” bees are the “black sheep” of their household.
“And so far as we all know, out of the, I feel, one thing like 1,500 or 1,700 species of Andrena on the earth … we all know of no different Andrena that could be a choosy pollen eater of members of the nightshade household,” Hung mentioned.
“In order that’s a reasonably particular and distinctive evolutionary innovation that this species has determined to tackle for itself.”
Bee species discoveries spotlight the quite a few ways in which bees higher our planet — and the Andrena androfovea is not any exception.
For example, miner bees are smaller than bumblebees by a matter of milimeters, however regardless of their small stature, they’ve a huge effect on the atmosphere.
As each pollinators and burrowers, the Andrena androfovea are pivotal to cross pollination and soil aeration, sustaining good soil well being and serving to native habitats bloom.
In his interview, Hung celebrated the little blue bee species for becoming a member of the annals of scientific historical past — and mentioned that there was nonetheless a lot left to find.
Evoking the phrases of Senegalese engineer and forest scientist Baba Dioum, Hung mentioned: “Ultimately, we solely defend what we love, and we solely love what we all know.”
“There are such a lot of species on the market that also stay fully unknown,” Hung mentioned. “So there’s nonetheless a lot to know concerning the pure world.”
“And it is just by going out and documenting these new species can we now have a greater and extra complete understanding of how nature works to maintain all of the life that we all know on Earth.”
Header picture through Professor James Hung
