As if deadly snakes, spiders and sharks were not enough, Australia now has a new creepy critter: a \u201cLucifer\u201d bee with devil-like horns.<\/p>\n
The species \u2013 dubbed Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer \u2013 was found in the state of Western Australia<\/a>, Curtin University announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Kit Prendergast at the university\u2019s School of Molecular and Life Sciences discovered the bee while surveying a critically endangered wildflower in 2019 and was immediately drawn to the insect\u2019s unique appearance.<\/p>\n \u201cThe female had these incredible little horns on her face,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n A fan of the Netflix TV show Lucifer, she said the name was the perfect fit for the bee\u2019s distinctively devilish appearance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the first new member of this bee group to be described in more than 20 years, which really shows how much life we still have to discover,\u201d Prendergast said.<\/p>\n \u2018The female had these incredible little horns on her face,\u2019 Kit Prendergast from Curtin University\u2019s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, says. Photograph: courtesy of Dr Kit Prendergast\/Curtin University<\/p>\n Prendergast hopes the discovery will raise awareness about the number of undiscovered species that could still be out there, especially in areas threatened by mining.<\/p>\n \u201cMany mining companies still don\u2019t survey for native bees, so we may be missing undescribed species, including those that play crucial roles in supporting threatened plants and ecosystems,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout knowing which native bees exist and what plants they depend on, we risk losing both before we even realise they\u2019re there.\u201d<\/p>\n Almost all flowering plants depend on wild pollinators, particularly bees<\/a>, but habitat loss and the climate crisis are driving many vital species to the brink of extinction<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As if deadly snakes, spiders and sharks were not enough, Australia now has a new creepy critter: a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-129390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}