The World’s Largest Bee Is Not Extinct
An expedition of conservationists have found a living Wallace’s Giant Bee on a remote Indonesian island. It’s been 38 years since scientists last spotted the insect, a rare species found only in the North Molucca islands of Indonesia. With a wingspan of 2.5 inches and a body the size of a human thumb, it’s considered the world’s largest bee species.
Wallace’s Giant Bee (Megachile pluto), shown with a honey bee for scale.The bee collects nectar to feed to its young, but doesn't produce honey like the European honeybee or some Australian natives, and can sting repeatedly as it doesn't die after the first sting.
Wallace’s Giant Bee is named after Alfred Russel Wallace, an English explorer and entomologist who worked with Charles Darwin to formulate the theory of evolution through natural selection. Wallace first discovered the bee on an expedition to Indonesia in 1859, describing the female as “a large black wasp-like insect with immense jaws like a stag beetle.” Though Wallace didn’t seem particularly interested in the bee—he devoted only a single line to it in his journal—it became something of an obsession among biologists.
Despite its conspicuous size, the bee remained elusive, and was feared to be extinct, with almost nothing known about the female’s secretive life cycle involving making nests of tree resin inside active arboreal termite mounds. The bee was not seen again until 122 years later, when several were observed in the wild in 1981 by American entomologist Adam C. Messer, who returned home with a handful of specimens that are now held in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Natural History Museum in London and other institutions.
But in January this year an international team of four conservationists from Australia, Canada and the US discovered a live specimen, and captured the first-ever photos and videos of Wallace’s Giant Bee.
Robin Moore, a conservation biologist with Global Wildlife Conservation, an Austin, Texas-based organization which runs a programme called The Search for Lost Species, said: “We know that [announcing this rediscovery] could seem like a big risk, given the demand, but the reality is that unscrupulous collectors already know that the bee is out there.”
Moore said it was vital that conservationists made the Indonesian government aware of the bee and took steps to protect the species and its habitat, which is threatened by massive deforestation for palm oil, which is rife thoughout Indonesia. “By making the bee a world-famous flagship for conservation we are confident that the species has a brighter future than if we just let it quietly be collected into oblivion,” he said.
Excited as they were to find the bee, expedition member Dr. Simon Robson, a biologist at the University of Sydney, and his team worry that the sighting may be a mixed blessing. Last year, an anonymous seller sold a previously unaccounted-for specimen to an unknown bidder on eBay for $9,100, highlighting the lack of protection afforded this rare species, whose size and rarity make it a target for collectors. “If you can get that much money for an insect, that encourages people to go and find them,” he said.
To help protect the bees, the team has agreed not to disclose the location of the specific island where they made their discovery.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-02-22/bee-giant-wallaces-rediscovered-indonesia/10830224https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/science/giant-bee-wallace.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/21/worlds-largest-bee-missing-for-38-years-found-in-indonesia
