Giant blue bee1/14/2024 ![]() He says over the course of his research he saw about 20 to 30 of the giants, though he only collected one. Locals, some of whom were familiar with the bee, guided him to a particular tree where the insects collect sap. Roch Desmier de Chenon, who is now 80, was working for the Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute in 1991 when he decided to search for Wallace's giant bee on the island of Halmahera. Unlike some of its relatives, the bee seemed “very relaxed” and non-aggressive, Bolt adds. After photographing and filming it, they let it go and it returned to the nest. “We yelled and screamed and hugged each other,” Robson says. They put a collection tube at the exit, and a full-sized female Wallace’s giant bee crawled out. They were about to call it a day, Bolt says, when they searched one last nest-which had a resiny hole within.Īfter several members of the party climbed up to take a took, it became clear there was a bee in the hole. After five days of fruitlessly searching termite mounds in trees during the rainy season, the team had begun to feel a bit discouraged. The report of the discovery comes shortly after the publication of a worldwide study showing that insect species are in decline around the world.īolt traveled to Indonesia with Wyman, Australian biologist Simon Robson, and writer Glen Chilton in January. Wallace's giant bee is also threatened by deforestation and habitat loss. Vereecken is pushing to change its status, though doing so will require more study. Vereecken and others think it should be classified as endangered, at the very least, considering how rare it is and that its range is almost certainly smaller than originally thought. Wallace’s giant bee is currently only considered “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which sets the conservation statuses of animals around the world. It’s currently legal for this species to be sold across borders, as the animal is not protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which governs international trade in threatened species. This male Andrena perplexa was caught in Maryland on May 16. He described these sales in a study published in December in the Journal of Insect Conservation. Vereecken is alarmed that this insect has been sold online-and it’s possible that more commerce is taking place through less visible channels. ![]() The bee, it seemed, was very much still around. ![]() Later in 2018, the same collector sold another for a couple thousand dollars. The very same day, Vereecken discovered that a collector was selling a specimen of Megachile pluto online, on eBay-it eventually sold for $9,100. (The man was thought to be dead by many in France, but Vereecken found to his surprise and joy that de Chenon is alive, and living in Melbourne, Australia.) ![]() Early last year, at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, he stumbled across a specimen collected in 1991 by a French researcher named Roch Desmier de Chenon. Over a decade ago, he sought out a specimen collected by Wallace himself, housed at Oxford Natural History Museum. He studies bee diversity and was naturally interested to see the world’s largest. Many have become intrigued by the insect, including Nicolas Vereecken, an entomologist and ecologist at the University of Brussels. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |