Scientists in Australia have recognized a brand new species of native bee with tiny, devil-like horns which have earned it a playfully hellish identify – “lucifer.”
The species, Megachile lucifer, was found by students surveying a critically endangered wildflower in Western Australia’s Goldfields in 2019, in accordance with a research printed Monday within the Journal of Hymenoptera Analysis.
The extremely distinctive, upward-pointing horns on the feminine bee’s face impressed its identify, mentioned Equipment Prendergast, lead creator of the research and an adjunct analysis fellow at Curtin College.
“When writing up the brand new species description[,] I used to be watching the Netflix present Lucifer,” Prendergast mentioned in a press release Tuesday. “The identify simply match completely.”
A DNA take a look at later confirmed that the species didn’t match any identified bees in present databases, making it the primary new member of this group to be described in additional than 20 years, researchers mentioned.
The horns, every measured at about 0.9 millimeters lengthy, may very well be used to entry flowers, compete for sources, and defend nests, researchers recommended, although their precise features stay unclear. The species’ male bees lack the horns.
The invention highlighted the necessity to research native bees, Prendergast mentioned, including that the brand new species may very well be in danger from habitat disturbance and different threatening processes like local weather change.
“With out realizing which native bees exist and what crops they depend upon, we danger dropping each earlier than we even notice they’re there,” she mentioned.
Australia has round 2,000 native bee species, greater than 300 of that are but to be scientifically named and described, in accordance with CSIRO, an Australian nationwide science company.
The nation’s native bees are “understudied and knowledge poor,” resulting in a lack of know-how on the conservation standing of “nearly all species,” Tobias Smith, a bee researcher on the College of Queensland, informed NBC Information in an e-mail Tuesday.
Australian authorities want “stronger insurance policies” to guard native bees from habitat loss, inappropriate fireplace regimes, and elevated dangers from megafires, mentioned Smith, who is just not concerned within the research.
Smith mentioned he inspired Australians to “get outdoors and search for some native bees and respect them.”
