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A black missile, the size of an inch, sails in the air of the jungle, a tonal buzz announcing his arrival. The massive insect lands heavily on a nest of termites tied to a tree, taking a moment to replicate its coppery wings and stretch its huge curved jaws. It's Wallace's giant bee, the biggest and most buzzing bee on the planet. After being extinct for almost four decades, the species has just been rediscovered in its native Indonesia.
Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto) takes its name from its original discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, the British naturalist famous for designing the theory of evolution independently through natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. Wallace picked up the bee during an expedition to the Indonesian Islands of the North Maluku Islands in 1858, describing it as a "large black insect resembling a wasp, with huge jaws like a Colorado beetle". by Western scientists, reviewed only by the entomologist Adam Messer in 1981, who was able to observe some of his behaviors on a number of small islands. But since then, no one has documented any encounter with the huge bee.
This changed everything when a research team visited North Maluku last month to observe the bee for the first time in 38 years.
The rediscovery comes after years of hard work and planning, according to Clay Bolt, the nature photographer who documented the giant bee last month. Several years ago, Bolt visited the bee collections of the American Museum of Natural History, getting acquainted with the native bees native to North America as part of a project documenting the underestimated insects. Eli Wyman, an entomologist at the museum, showed Bolt a rare and remarkable specimen of Wallace's giant bee and expressed his desire to see this insect in the wild.
Together, they developed a plan to travel to Indonesia in search of the bee.
"We did not know exactly how we were going to get there," Bolt told Earther. There was little information on the natural history of the bee. It was therefore difficult to find suitable habitats for research.
As part of this planning, Bolt has managed to make the giant bee one of the "25 Most Wanted Places" in Global Wildlife Conservation's Lost Species Research Program, which aims to fund expeditions to find species having acquired the status of MIA. When Bolt and Wyman saw that a mysterious giant bee specimen had sold 9,000 USD on eBay in early 2018, they encountered a new sense of urgency to find this bee. rare.
"We decided that we had to go there, "said Bolt. "First, see it in nature, document it, but also to establish local contacts in Indonesia who could start working with us as partners to try to find a way to protect the bee."
After contacting other researchers interested in bee research, Bolt and Wyman formed a research team that embarked for Indonesia in January.
The team spent almost a week exploring rainforests in the northern Maluku lowlands, where they were fed by extreme moisture and heat, interspersed with torrential storms. There was little clue about where to find insects, with the exception of unusual bee nests, which are carved in active termite mounds in trees. These tiny suites are carefully lined with resin to prevent water and neighbors from entering the termites.
The team therefore searched for nests, got separated and monitored termites with binoculars in the hope that a big sound signal would manifest itself.
After days of unsuccessful searches, the expedition has reached its last day. Iswan – an Indonesian team guide – noticed a mound of low termites and, after further inspection, a round hole the size of a quarter was dug into his side; just big enough for a giant Wallace bee. When Iswan climbed up and looked inside the hole, he stepped back, thinking he saw a snake moving inside. After Wyman glanced at him and thought that the resin-covered room looked exactly like a honeycomb, Bolt glanced at it with a headlamp.
It was not a snake, but Megachile pluto herself, blocking the entrance to her home.
In ecstasy, the team covered the outlet of the nest with a tubulure to be able to collect his thoughts without the bee flying away.
"We were panicking after so many years of planning and almost losing hope," Bolt said. "It was an incredible moment to realize that we had come all the way, other people had looked for it and we were there: dirty and sweaty and we found this insect. For me, it's a moment of great gratitude and humility to be part of this moment and this team. "
When it was time for the bee to shine, Bolt tickled her with some grass to get her out of the nest, where she was as gorgeous as the museum specimen, and more. Four times larger than a bee, Wallace's giant bee is a sight to behold and amply deserves the name that Messer gave to the species in the 80s: "Raja ofu", the king of bees.
Although the long jaws are annoying, they are not pleasant to use, but rather used to carry globes of resin in the nest. So more like salad tongs than tongs. Bees also live solo and do not have the defensive and pungent tendencies of their parents living in hives.
After taking many photos and videos of this incredible insect, Bolt had made a world premiere: photographing a living Wallace giant bee.
Now that the bee has been rediscovered, Bolt explains that there is still a lot of work to be done to protect this species. An additional study needs to be conducted to determine the number of bees present and the habitats they use.
Bolt noted that a relative lack of local knowledge of the bee's existence is somewhat reassuring because very few people know where the nests are. But not being aware of special biodiversity means there is no way to protect key habitats from destruction or other threats.
Bolt said the next steps would be to work with Indonesian researchers and conservation groups to put in place protection for the bee. An itinerary might involve raising the giant bee as an avatar of local biodiversity, much like what was done with Wallace's standard wing, a bird of the region.
"It's a symbol of these islands," said Bolt about the bird. "It's about a lot of different packaging and all kinds of printed products."
For Bolt, the rediscovery of Wallace's giant bee is a ray of light in an otherwise dark period for Earth's biodiversity.
"It really gave me hope. There is so much bad news coming forward, all of these species being lost, and I think it's sometimes easy to give up and say 'there's more' Hope for nothing, "said Bolt. Wallace's giant bee shows that with the necessary time and effort, one can find long-lost species.
Jake Buehler is a science writer living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, worshiping the strange, wild and unrecognized tree of Tree of Life. Follow on Twitter or on his blog.
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