
Blue bee feared to be extinct is found in Florida - lerie1982
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/blue-bee-feared-be-extinct-found-florida-180974957
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atulatul
Currently 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.

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polytely
I 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)

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Hitton
It'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.

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coldpie
Reading the article, no scientist is quoted as fearing the bee to be extinct.
It seems to be an embellishment from the article author.

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doodpants
If the author himself feared them to be extinct, then it's _technically_
true...

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griffinkelly
I was just discussing blue bees with my friend--they're native to Australia. I
had no idea they were in North America as well.

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caf
It'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.

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stormdennis
I think most bees are solitary and live in burrows they make in the ground.
And only two species of bee make honey.

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markdown
> And only two species of bee make honey.

Not true, unless you mean that humans only harvest the honey of two species.

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stormdennis
I'm sure you're right, I was just quoting something someone told me one time
and I probably picked them up wrong.

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ackbar03
It'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

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harikb
I 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

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jcims
Hey they showed up once from non-existence, they can do it again. Just got to
dig deep.

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Mizza
I 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.

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gpm
We think we only _know_ about 10% of the species on the planet. We're a long
way from archiving dna records of them all.

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im3w1l
We know about all the ones that matter though. Like the keystones of the
ecosystems.

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WJW
That is a serious "quotation needed" statement. How can you even know you know
about all relevant ecosystems when you are missing 90% of species? Besides,
just knowing about the "keystones" of an ecosystem is required but not
sufficient.

As an analogy, if you knew the top 10% keystone chemicals that make up the
human body but did not know the long tail of the other 90%, you'd likely miss
out on a lot of the details that make it all work like immune system cells and
vitamins. Just because a molecule (or species) is rare does not make it non-
essential.

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orblivion
I think I saw this guy in a Metroid game once...

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linksnapzz
The Blue Bee: Least Effective Marvel Superhero. Superpower: Really, really
good at hiding.

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WesolyKubeczek
Bees: "Oh no! They have found us again, we're in trouble!"

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blondin
even 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...

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xipho
The 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-
irisdes...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/science/chocolate-irisdescent-
rainbow.html))

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Eiriksmal
The 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&i...](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=steel+blue+cricket+hunter&iax=images&ia=images)

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bitwize
I just imagined it -- the most 2020 headline possible: "Rare Blue Bees Rebound
After Coronavirus, Devastated By Murder Hornets"

