21–30 of 54 posts
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.
It's a different species though, this is the Australian one: https://imgur.com/X1vf3v4 Oddly enough they're solitary, rather than living in hives.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Source?
"How many species? The estimates I made in 1986 and cited in The Diversity of Life (1992) put the number of recognized living species in the world— in other words, those formally described and bearing two-part scientific names— at approximately 1.4 million.
About 13,000 additional “new” species are recognized each year. Thus in the decade since 1986 more than 100,000 species have been added, bringing the total as I counted it to 1.5 million. Meanwhile, the numbers in some important groups have been revised upward— in particular in the insects, the largest of all groups, from 751,000 in the 1980s to 865,000 in 1998. A similar elevation has been made for the fungi, from 47,000 to 69,000 species. A commonly cited total world figure in the late 1990s, suggested for example in the Global Biodiversity Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme (1995), is 1.75 million species. But this does not take into account the number of formal species names that have been erroneously applied to species named by earlier investigators, requiring an eventual reduction of the global number by 10 or even 20 percent...
“Working figures” for all groups, including insects, have tended to fall close to 10 million; the Global Biodiversity Assessment number, which constitutes no more than an educated guess and leans to conservative sentiment, is 13,620,000."
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
We should not think that a 6 month shutdown will undo all atrocities of man or nature
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
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
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.
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...
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/…
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.
I guess, for now best way we have is just a simple preservation, within nature reserves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a different species though, this is the Australian one: https://imgur.com/X1vf3v4 Oddly enough they're solitary, rather than living in hives.
I think most bees are solitary and live in burrows they make in the ground. And only two species of bee make honey.
Not true, unless you mean that humans only harvest the honey of two species.