Saturday, 7 January 2017

USU researchers find 'ant-like' bees among new species


A team of Utah State University researchers has found nine new species of bees that are found only in the Western United States, including Utah.
The new species of the Perdita subgenus Heteroperdita were reported by USU’s Terry Griswold and Zach Portman with researchers from other institutions in the Dec. 23 edition of the journal Zootaxa.
“It’s exciting — you can go in our backyard, in parts of Utah and adjacent states, and find something that no one knew was there,” said Griswold, a USU adjunct professor and researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Lab in Logan.
Statewide, these bees are found in places like the Great Salt Lake and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, but probably not Cache Valley, because the plant the insects visit for pollen likely doesn’t exist here, Griswold said.-Read More

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