As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle, and 4 times the dimensions of a honey bee, Wallace’s giant bee shouldn’t be entirely inconspicuous.
But after being lost to extinction for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on Indonesia’s North Maluku islands.
A search team of biologists from North America and Australia found one female Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile Pluto) living in a termite nest in a tree, greater than two meters above the bottom.
“Seeing this ‘flying bulldog’ insect that we now not knew existed was breathtaking,” said Clay Bolt, a specialist photographer who obtained the primary live images of the species.
“To really see how beautiful and large this species is in person, to hear the sound of its giant wings flapping as it flew past my head, was just amazing.”
The giant bee – the feminine might be almost 4 cm long – first became known to science in 1858, when British explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace discovered it on the tropical Indonesian island of Bacan.
He described the feminine bee as “a big, black wasp-like insect with huge jaws resembling a stag beetle.”
Despite its size, the bee has remained elusive, and almost nothing is thought concerning the female’s secret life cycle of making tree resin nests in energetic arboreal termite mounds.
Scientists didn’t see this bee until 1981, when American entomologist Adam Messer rediscovered it on three Indonesian islands. He watched because the bee used its giant mandibles to gather resin and wood to construct termite-proof nests.
Search teams were unable to re-find the bee, however the rediscovery of the one female bee raises hope that the species still lives within the region’s forests.
The bees’ habitat is threatened by massive deforestation for agriculture in Indonesia, and their size and rarity make them a goal for collectors. There is currently no legal protection for the trade in Wallace’s giant bee.
Robin Moore, a conservation biologist at Global Wildlife Conservation, which runs a program called The Search for Lost Species, said: “We know that spreading the news about this rediscovery may appear to be an enormous risk given the demand, but the truth is such that unscrupulous collectors already know the bee is on the market somewhere.”
Moore said it was critical that conservationists notify the Indonesian government of the bee’s existence and take steps to guard the species and its habitat. “By making the bee a world-renowned conservation flagship, we ensure that the species has a better future than if we simply allowed it to be quietly passed into oblivion,” he said.
Source : Guardian
