Blue Bee Baffles Biologists
When you think of a bee, what do you picture?
If the image in your mind was of a blue insect doing handstands, you may be envisioning the world’s newest species of bee: Andrena androfovea. After having first observed this new bee decades ago, researchers
According to Illinois Tech Assistant Professor of Biology Matthew Smith, whose research focuses on how bees respond to anthropogenic stressors, this discovery is particularly interesting because it showcases nature’s ongoing process of speciation.
“It’s going back to the evolutionary pressure, we’re living in the Anthropocene,” says Smith. “This is the period where you’re having a lot of human-made changes to our environment. What’s interesting is that we’re able to see animals adapt to those changes, leading to speciation events where we now have a new subgenus and new species.”
The amount of work that goes into discovering and classifying a new species is a massive undertaking. While it primarily focused on physical characteristics in the past, today’s technology allows scientists to examine animals in a variety of new ways.
“Since genomic and transcriptomic sequencing is more accessible and faster than ever, we can rapidly evaluate how genes, gene regulation, and resultant proteins may change across related animals,” says Smith. “All of that creates this comprehensive description of the animal. Now you can say that even if this Andrena may look very similar to another species, there are XYZ genes that are different.”
This discovery could have implications for agriculture.
Since the Andrena androfovea has evolved a unique way—doing handstands—to forage on nightshade plants such as tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants, gaining a better understanding of how the new species gathers pollen and nectar could impact a variety of crops.
“Discovering species that have a specialization in foraging is really useful for improving agriculture systems if you have a specific crop,” says Smith. “Knowing that you have a bee that’s specialized in pollinating a specific crop or flower can lead to better support of that native bee community while hopefully leading to more efficient, higher crop yields.”
