It’s possible that you’ve heard about a new species of bee from Western Australia that has a snout like a dog. But did you know it specializes on just a few species of plant from the Fabaceae (legume) family? And how did it get named L. zephyr? And what does it mean to be a “plasterer bee?” Hear about all of this and more as we get a behind the scenes look into the wonderful world of native bees with Dr. Kit Prendergast.

Kit Prendergast’s paper “Leioproctus zephyr, an oligolectic new bee species with a distinctive clypeus” is in Volume 93 of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.93.85685

New Species: Leioproctus zephyr

Episode image courtesy of Kit Prendergast

Follow Kit onTwitter: @BeeBabette

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Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

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