A team of Australian researchers has discovered 71 new native bee species belonging to the resin pot bees, or Megachile (Austrochile), which are unique to Australia and present in every state and territory except Tasmania.
An Australian resin pot bee. Credit: David Pike.
As their name suggests, the bee species builds resin pots to protect their brood, with solitary mother bees hanging their pots individually from twigs or as clusters on the bark of trees.
"The group was previously considered to contain seven species, and in 1992 an additional 18 were named in the master's thesis of Queensland Museum's Dr Judith King, who is a co-author on our paper," says lead author Dr Remko Leijs, from the South Australian Museum.
"Over the years, we discovered a further 23 species during field collection trips, including during various Bush Blitz surveys, which look for the unknown and hence regularly result in the discovery of new invertebrate and plant species."
Bush Blitz, a partnership between the Australian Government, BHP Billiton and Earth Watch Australia, documents fauna and flora from selected national reserves.
It also provides funding for the description of new species, and this enabled the researchers to compare the newly collected species to those present in Australian entomological collections.
"This uncovered an additional 20 undescribed species, hidden in the collections, which highlights the importance of entomological collections as a repository for these kinds of discoveries," Dr Leijs says.
Dr Katja Hogendoorn, from the University of Adelaide, says there is still much to be discovered about Australia's bees, and their vital role as pollinators.
Megachile (Austrochile) fenelli. Credit: Howard Hamon.
"Despite their environmental and economic importance as pollinators of native plants and crops, the Australian bee fauna is poorly understood," says Dr Hogendoorn, a co-author on the study published in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.
"An estimated one-third of bee species remains unknown to science, and dearth of funding for taxonomic work hampers our ability to assess the conservation status and undertake action to protect native bees.
"We may be losing species that we don't even know about yet."
There are around 1700 known native bee species in Australia. This discovery raises the number of known resin pot bee species to 78 - almost half of which are known from a single location only.
Dr James Dorey, a co-author from the University of Wollongong, says more research is needed to understand what threats resin pot bees might be facing.
"These species are likely to have a limited distribution, but realistically, we don't have enough information about their occurrence or population sizes to say much about their conservation status," he says.
