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An extremely rare bee species that has not been seen for nearly a century and thought to be extinct has been rediscovered by a single researcher in Australia.
This rare “masked” bee, known as Pharohylaeus lactiferus, is native to Australia and is the only species of the genus Pharohylaeus. It is similar in size to the invasive European bee (Apis mellifera). Only six individuals have been previously identified in Australia and the last one was reported in 1923.
But the bee was recently rediscovered by James Dorey, a PhD student at Flinders University, while doing fieldwork in the state of Queensland. After the fortuitous rediscovery, Dorey conducted a larger investigation of Queensland and New South Wales devoted to the search for P. lactiferus.
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“I never really expected to find any,” Dorey told Live Science. “But we’ve caught a lot more bees now than we did back then.”
His research on bees suggests that deforestation and forest fires could put them in danger of extinction, for good this time.
In search of bees
The rediscovery of P. lactiferus was a happy accident for Dorey.
“Knowing that P. lactiferus hadn’t been found for so long, which meant I kept an eye out for him as I sample my way up the hill, “Dorey said.” Once I managed to find the first specimen, I had a place to start and the opportunity to look for more. “
After the discovery, Dorey spent five months surveying 245 sites across Queensland and New South Wales in search of more masked bees. Dorey focused his efforts on some flowering plants that were similar to where he found the first individual. Sampling included a combination of observing the flowers to see if bees were visiting them and “general scans” with a butterfly net above the flowers.
The investigation revealed three geographically isolated populations of masked bees on the east coast of Australia. Each population lives in tropical and subtropical plots tropical forest with a specific type of vegetation. Dorey thinks bees are especially dependent on firewheel trees (stenocarpus slnuatus) and the flames of Illawarra (Brachychiton acerifolius).
Under the threat
The survey identified more than P. lactiferus than ever before. But due to the mediocrity of historical records, there is no way of knowing whether masked bee populations have increased or decreased over time, according to Dorey.
Although bees may live in isolated populations because they strongly prefer certain habitats, Dorey also suspects that Deforestation and increasingly severe and numerous forest fires could also play a role in their isolation.
“Where these bees were found, this type of rainforest has suffered habitat destruction and fragmentation,” Dorey said. “This means that there is less of this habitat available”, and it makes it “more difficult for [the bees] to move between what’s left. “
Unfortunately, the rise in temperatures caused by climate change will only worsen forest fires, and deforestation is only continuing, meaning that “these potential threats are likely to get worse,” Dorey said.
“Smaller, lower quality fragments may make it more likely that P. lactiferus will go extinct in each shard, and it’s less likely that it can recolonize from another, ”Dorey said.
Therefore, the protection of these habitat fragments is essential to their survival.
However, it is impossible to protect species without monitoring the number of bees as well as the changes in their habitats.
“Without it, we have no idea what’s going on in ecosystems,” Dorey said. “If we weren’t going to look, then species decline would certainly go unnoticed and species protection would be impossible.”
The study was published online on February 25 in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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