As if deadly snakes, spiders and sharks were not enough, Australia now has a new creepy critter: a “lucifer” bee with devil-like horns.<\/p>\n
The species – dubbed Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer – was found in the state of Western Australia, Curtin University has announced.<\/p>\n
Kit Prendergast at the university’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences discovered the bee while surveying a critically endangered wildflower in 2019 and was immediately drawn to the insect’s unique appearance.<\/p>\n
“The female had these incredible little horns on her face,” she said.<\/p>\n
A fan of the Netflix TV show ‘Lucifer’, she said the name was the perfect fit for the bee’s distinctively devilish appearance.<\/p>\n
“It’s 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,” Prendergast said.<\/p>\n
She added that she 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
“Many mining companies still don’t survey for native bees, so we may be missing undescribed species, including those that play crucial roles in supporting threatened plants and ecosystems,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Without knowing which native bees exist and what plants they depend on, we risk losing both before we even realise they’re there.”<\/p>\n
Almost all flowering plants depend on wild pollinators, particularly bees, but habitat loss and climate change are driving many vital species to the brink of extinction.<\/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":260277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-260276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}