Tag: Hymenoptera

Bush Blitz: The largest Australian nature discovery project finds 4 new bee species

Four new native bee species were recognised as part of the largest Australian nature discovery project, called ‘Bush Blitz‘. The South Australian bee specialists used molecular and morphological evidence to prove them as new. Three of the species had narrow heads and long mouth parts – adaptations to foraging on flowers of emu-bushes, which have narrow constrictions at the base. The new species are described in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Bees are important pollinators of crops and native plants, but habitat loss and pesticides are proved to be causing a serious decline in their populations in Europe and the United States of America. Meanwhile, the conservation status of native Australian bees is largely unknown because solid baseline data are unavailable and about one third of the species are as yet unknown to science. Furthermore, identification of Australian bees is hampered by a lack of keys for about half of the named species.

With their present publication, bee specialists Katja Hogendoorn (University of Adelaide), Remko Leijs and Mark Stevens (South Australian Museum) are now trying to make Australian native bees more accessible to the scientific community. The study introduces a new Barcoding of Life project, ‘AUSBS‘, which will be built to contain the barcode sequences of the identified Australian native bees.

In future, this database can help scientists who have molecular tools, but insufficient knowledge of bees, to identify known species. Yet, that is not the only use of the database. “Bee taxonomists can access and use the molecular information to answer specific problems, for example, how certain species are related or whether or not a male and female belong to the same species”, says Dr. Hogendoorn. “And combined with morphological information, the molecular database can help to identify new species”, she adds.

In their publication, the researchers demonstrate the utility of the database. After careful evaluation of the DNA sequence data and subsequent morphological comparison of the collected bees to museum type specimens, they recognised four new species in the genusEuhesma, which they subsequently described.

Three of the species belong to the group of bees that specialise on the flowers of emu-bushes. These bees have evolved narrow faces and very long mouth parts to collect the nectar through a narrow constriction at the base of the flowers. A similar evolution has been already observed in other groups of bees. The fourth species belongs to a different group within this large genus and has a normally shaped head.

So far, the project includes 271 sequences of 120 species that were collected during the Bush Blitz surveys, Australia’s largest nature discovery project. The researchers intend to build on the existing DNA database to cover as many as possible of the Australian species. “It is hoped that this will stimulate native bee research”, says Dr. Hogendoorn. “With about 750 Australian bee species still undescribed and many groups in need of revision there is an enormous job to do”, she concludes.

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Original source:

Hogendoorn K, Stevens M, Leijs R (2015) DNA barcoding of euryglossine bees and the description of new species of Euhesma Michener (Hymenoptera, Colletidae, Euryglossinae).ZooKeys 520: 41-59.doi: 10.3897/zookeys.520.6185

Parasite vs. Invader: New endoparasitoid wasp can save the Dominican Republic economy

While biocontrol agents come in different shapes, often taking a lot of time for scientists to research, test and produce, natural ones always seem to be the better option. Now that Drs. Taveras and Hansson have discovered a new parasitoid wasp species in the Dominican Republic, they might have not only met the worst natural enemy for a widely spread invasive pest corrupting a large part of the essential pigeon pea crops. They are likely to have found a whole new field for investigation into the potential weapons against the eradicator of up to 76% of the essential crop. Their study is available in the open access Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

The find of this new gregarious endoparasitoid wasp, called Pediobius cajanus, is also the first time representative of this genus has been retrieved from the Asian fly. This invasive pest is estimated to destroy a huge part of the pigeon pea crops, a culture which is an essential food source for tropical America, a large part of the export and even has medicinal value. Therefore, the new species is very important not only in terms of the exploration of the biodiversity in Latin America, but also in economical sense.

Even when treated regularly with insecticides, the Asian fly manages to corrupt as much as 27% of the Dominican pigeon pea crops, a previous study shows. Although a precise figure of the damage cannot be provided due to large variations between localities and the impossibility of tracking the whole span of the pea cultivation areas, there is the case of the town of Rancho Los Vargas, Puerto Plata, where in 2012 the loss of the culture reached 76%.

On the other hand, the new wasp species was found to kill an average of 25% of the Asian fly larvae in the researched areas. In comparison, the previously known enemies of the pest are accountable for only 2%. This is why the scientists are now proposing the new species as a biocontrol agent.

In conclusion, the authors suggest that the parasitoid wasp is likely distributed across a much larger area. They believe that the new species could also be found over the entire island of Hispaniola, on neighbouring islands in the Caribbean and even in the tropical parts of the mainland in the Americas. Its record and distribution both call for a further investigation into the potential implementation of the wasp in controlling the Asian fly.

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Original source:

Taveras R, Hansson C (2015) Pediobius cajanus sp. n. (Hymenoptera, Eulophidae), an important natural enemy of the Asian fly (Melanagromyza obtusa (Malloch)) (Diptera, Agromyzidae) in the Dominican Republic. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 45: 41-54. doi: 10.3897/JHR.45.4964

Flickr and a citizen science website help in recording a sawfly species range expansion

Social network Flickr and citizen science website BugGuide have helped scientists to expand the known range of a rarely collected parasitic woodwasp, native to the eastern United States. Partially thanks to the two online photograph platforms, now the species’ distribution now stretches hundreds of miles west of previous records. Previously known from only 50 specimens mainly from the Northeast, now the species was discovered in the Ozark Mountains by researchers from the University of Arkansas. Their study is published it in the open access journal Biodiversity Data Journal.

Spurred on by the find, Michael Skvarla, a Ph.D. candidate at the university, contacted retired sawfly expert David Smith who alerted him to a hundred unpublished specimens housed in the United States National Entomology Collection at the Smithsonian, many of which were collected as bycatch in surveys that targeted invasive species like emerald ash borer andAsian longhorned beetle. Additional specimens from Iowa, Minnesota, and Manitoba, which also represent significant western range expansions, were found after users posted photos of the species on the social network Flickr and the citizen science website BugGuide.

“We used two resources – photos on social media and bycatch from large trapping surveys – which are often underutilized and I was really happy we could work both of them into the paper,” said Skvarla, the lead author. “This work highlights their utility, as well as the importance of maintaining biological collections like the U.S. National Collection and continuing to collect in undersampled regions like the Ozark Mountains.”

Parasitic woodwasps attack the immature stages of longhorned beetles, jewel beetles, and other woodwasps which bore into wood and have long fascinated entomologists because of this parasitoid nature, which is unique among woodwasps, and rarity in collections. The Arkansas specimens, which belong to the species Orussus minutus and motivated the initial research into the group, were collected as part of a larger survey of the insect fauna around the Buffalo National River.

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Original Source:

Skvarla, M.J., Tripodi, A., Szalanski, A., Dowling, A.P.G. 2015. New records of Orussus minutusMiddlekauff, 1983 (Hymenoptera: Orussidae) represent a significant western range expansion. Biodiversity Data Journal, 3: e35793. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e5793