Rare Australian bee rediscovered after nearly a century - Livescience.com
After the chance rediscovery, Dorey conducted a larger survey of Queensland and New South Wales dedicated to searching for P.
"I never really expected to find any," Dorey told Live Science.lactiferus hadn't been found for so long meant that I was keeping an eye open for it as I sampled my way up the coast," Dorey said.
After the discovery Dorey spent five months surveying 245 sites across Queensland and New South Wales in search for more of the masked bees.Dorey thinks that the bees are particularly dependent on firewheel trees (Stenocarpus sinuatus) and Illawarra flame trees (Brachychiton acerifolius). .
But due to poor historic records there is no way of knowing if the masked bee populations have increased or decreased over time, according to Dorey.
Although the bees' may live in isolated populations because they strongly prefer certain habitats, Dorey also suspects that deforestation and increasingly severe and numerous wildfires could also be playing a role in their isolation."Where these bees have been found, that rainforest type has undergone habitat destruction and fragmentation," Dorey said.Unfortunately, rising temperatures caused by climate change will only worsen wildfires, and deforestation is only continuing, which means "these potential threats are likely to get worse," Dorey said. .However, protecting species is impossible without tracking the bees' numbers as well as changes in their habitats. "Without it we have no idea what's going on in ecosystems," Dorey said