Science

Judi Lynn

(160,545 posts) Tue Jul 14, 2020, 07:56 PM Jul 2020

Gorgeous images of Australian 'rainbow' bees will blow your mind

By Yasemin Saplakoglu - Staff Writer 12 hours ago

One of the top plant pollinators in the country, these colorful bees likely originated in tropical regions of Australia.

This female bee is Fijian bee species (Homalictus hadrander)
(Image: © James Dorey, Flinders University)

Sick of frightening 'murder hornets'? Then feast your eyes on these beautiful rainbow bees, which are currently buzzing around their homeland of Australia.

One of the top plant pollinators in the country, these colorful bees (of the genus Homalictus) have colonized many regions of Australia and the South-West Pacific. These stunning Homalictus bees glisten with patches of aqua blue, golden green and orange, according to Aussie Bee, a website hosted by a private organization called The Australian Native Bee Research Centre. The little characters carry pollen on fine feathery hair beneath their abdomen and on their hind legs, according to Aussie Bee.

Though previous studies have suggested that the bees had come from Australia, researchers hadn't yet examined their evolutionary history. Now, a new study finds that indeed, the buzzing beauties originated in tropical regions of Australia and then dispersed into subtropical, temperate and arid regions of that country and then expanded into the Pacific.

"Homalictus bees are a leading generalist plant pollinator across Australia and as far north as southern China," study co-author James Dorey, a doctoral candidate at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, said in a statement. Understanding where the bees originated and how they became broadly distributed across Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Australia and archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean where they now play "a keystone pollination role," is important to understand plant-bee co-evolution in the area, the authors wrote in the study.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/gorgeous-rainbow-bees-australia.html