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Blue bee feared to be extinct is found in Florida
- bitwize 6y agoI just imagined it -- the most 2020 headline possible: "Rare Blue Bees Rebound After Coronavirus, Devastated By Murder Hornets"
- umvi 6y agoYou forgot to take a jab at the president too. Try: "Rare Blue Bees Rebound After Coronavirus, Devastated By Murder Hornets, while President golfs without a mask"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WesolyKubeczek 6y agoBees: "Oh no! They have found us again, we're in trouble!"
- blondin 6y agoeven though the picture is not real, that's a truly beautiful creature! to be honest, i would personally prefer blue bees over yellow. there's just something about the color blue...
- notadog 6y agoWhy would you say that the picture is not real? That is a bold claim to make without any evidence, especially since you are incorrect. For anyone curious, image was originally published in the scientific journal ZooKeys. (https://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=2987 https://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=2987)
- djsumdog 6y agooh wow, and that article has the face pollen the original article is talking about.
- xipho 6y agoThe color is absolutely real. Many Hymenoptera, and other insects have this coloration. It structural, not pigment, bouncing light around via microscopic grooves and ridges. Fun fact, most Hymenoptera are also very very small, ~2mm or so, and some the chalcid, or jewel-wasps are very often iridescent. Someone just pulled off this same effect with Chocolate a while back. [1] (NTY paywall] [1](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/science/chocolate-irisdescent-rainbow.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/science/chocolate-irisdes...)
- Eiriksmal 6y agoThe iridescent blue color of the massive Steel-Blue Cricket Hunter wasp is stunning to see in real life: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=steel+blue+cricket+hunter&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=steel+blue+cricket+hunter&i...
- dTal 6y agoI know someone who pulled off holographic chocolate - 3D images - several decades ago. The technique is more or less just lithography on a mould. Turns out people aren't interested in actually eating it. They assume there's some weird coating.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- linksnapzz 6y agoThe Blue Bee: Least Effective Marvel Superhero. Superpower: Really, really good at hiding.
- griffinkelly 6y agoI was just discussing blue bees with my friend--they're native to Australia. I had no idea they were in North America as well.
- caf 6y agoIt's a different species though, this is the Australian one: https://imgur.com/X1vf3v4 https://imgur.com/X1vf3v4 Oddly enough they're solitary, rather than living in hives.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThat's how you're not found!
- artursapek 6y agoWow, that is a beautiful creature.
- stormdennis 6y agoI think most bees are solitary and live in burrows they make in the ground. And only two species of bee make honey.
- markdown 6y ago> And only two species of bee make honey. Not true, unless you mean that humans only harvest the honey of two species.
- stormdennis 6y agoI'm sure you're right, I was just quoting something someone told me one time and I probably picked them up wrong.
- Gibbon1 6y agoLast time I read about bee's I found that bees range from totally solitary, to gregarious, to communal, to a large number of eusocial colonial species.
- ejjw 6y agoKejuw
- Mizza 6y agoI pray to God that there's an Archive.org for biology somewhere, that scientists are trying to sequence the genome of every possible species that we can find, just so that we can give _something_ to the future before we wipe it all out. I'd even settle for the dystopian version where a biotech company does it just to patent all of the genes that nature has already paid the cost to evolve.
- gpm 6y agoWe think we only know about 10% of the species on the planet. We're a long way from archiving dna records of them all.
- Exmoor 6y agoSource?
- jhloa2 6y agohttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.h...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- atulatul 6y agoFrom The Diversity Of Life by Edward O. Wilson (These numbers are for recognized species.) This does not answer the "only 10% known" part. However, the part where the author says 13000 new species recognized every year should give an idea. Also this is about species not members under those species. And from the same book "Bacteria continue to be the “black hole” of biodiversity, their depths unplumbed." "How many species? The estimates I made in 1986 and cited in The Diversity of Life (1992) put the number of recognized living species in the world— in other words, those formally described and bearing two-part scientific names— at approximately 1.4 million. About 13,000 additional “new” species are recognized each year. Thus in the decade since 1986 more than 100,000 species have been added, bringing the total as I counted it to 1.5 million. Meanwhile, the numbers in some important groups have been revised upward— in particular in the insects, the largest of all groups, from 751,000 in the 1980s to 865,000 in 1998. A similar elevation has been made for the fungi, from 47,000 to 69,000 species. A commonly cited total world figure in the late 1990s, suggested for example in the Global Biodiversity Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme (1995), is 1.75 million species. But this does not take into account the number of formal species names that have been erroneously applied to species named by earlier investigators, requiring an eventual reduction of the global number by 10 or even 20 percent... “Working figures” for all groups, including insects, have tended to fall close to 10 million; the Global Biodiversity Assessment number, which constitutes no more than an educated guess and leans to conservative sentiment, is 13,620,000."
- atulatul 6y agoCurrently reading The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson. Wanted to read his book about ants but it was not available/deliverable/ebook. So purchased this on kindle. Have read only about 30%. But some of the things are new. I expected it to be a refresher course after a few of David Attenborough documentaries. But some of the things are new. Like how do we define species. A lot of these things are available on wikipedia. But I think it helps if you take time to read books and then explore further on the web. Also liked and would recommend very highly Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees (so many new things to know). Leaving this comment here just in case someone is interested.
- Tomte 6y ago> Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees I haven't read it, but you should be aware that his theses are highly controversial in expert circles.
- polytely 6y agoI was really surprised to learn how vague the concept of a species really is. Nature is so complex and varied that it is impossible to provide one definition of species which can be applied to all life. The excellent youtube channel The Brain Scoop (from the field museum in Chicago) has a nice video explaining the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fOfFlMe6ek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fOfFlMe6ek
- ackbar03 6y agoIt's quite heartwarming to see how resilient nature is. A lot of near extinct species seems to be making a comeback with the coronavirus slowing down human activity. In a way humans are the real virus lol
- harikb 6y agoI get the sentiment, but let us take a moment to remember that truly extinct species are not coming back, only those which were thought to be extinct or close to extinction. We should not think that a 6 month shutdown will undo all atrocities of man or nature
- jcims 6y agoHey they showed up once from non-existence, they can do it again. Just got to dig deep.
- Hitton 6y agoIt's kinda weird to immediately jump to conclusion that a species is extinct after not seeing it for few years, when it's so rare that it eluded discovery until 2011.
- orblivion 6y agoI think I saw this guy in a Metroid game once...