Halictid bee at Greenleigh, NSW
Identification history
| Lipotriches (Austronomia) ferricauda | 12 Mar 2021 | LyndalT | ||
| Lipotriches sp. (genus) | 6 Mar 2021 | michael.batley | ||
| Lipotriches sp. (genus) | 6 Mar 2021 | LyndalT |
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User's notes
This little bee kept coming back to the base of the same almost-dead Pycnoneurus flower head - it is still there at 7:30 pm and I think will spend the night there. It has red legs, a black and yellow striped abdomen and a paler face
5 comments
LyndalT
wrote:
12 Mar 2021
Local expert has suggest L. ferricauda because if the very red legs. And it is a boy bee, they roost on sticks.
michael.batley
wrote:
12 Mar 2021
It is certainly a male and it may very well be L. ferricauda, but there is no description of the male in the literature and I have never found the sexes together. If your local expert has evidence associating the sexes, I would be very interested. The male of L. phanerura does have red legs, but would be smaller than a male L. ferricauda and would usually have orange tegulae and antennae.
LyndalT
wrote:
12 Mar 2021
He (Peter Abbott) told me it was a boy because of longer antennae and its roost on this flower rather than underground, which is reserved for the girls. He said it looked like specimens of this species that he has but another option might be L australica, but they aren't as red in the legs. I did finally get a pic of its face, if that helps?
michael.batley
wrote:
12 Mar 2021
Of most help would be a good estimate of size. My best guess is that he is L. phanerura and if so he should be about 7 mm long. My guess is based on some reddish colour on the tegulae. (I would expect pure black for L. ferricauda.) Colours don't always come out accurately in photographs, so my suggestion presupposes that the red on the legs is darker than the true colour and we don't see the green metallic colour of phanerura for the same reason.
LyndalT
wrote:
13 Mar 2021
The Pycnoneurus are 20mm diameter so a circumference of 63mm, meaning if you kind up this Lipotriches in a circle, 9 of them should fit nose to tail
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Nearby sightings
Location information
- Coordinates 149.250887-35.364658
- Maps QPRC LGA
- Places Greenleigh, NSW
Sighting information
- 1 Abundance
- 6 Mar 2021 07:13 PM Recorded on
- LyndalT Recorded by
Additional information
- Pycnoneurus globosus Associated plant
- 5mm to 12mm Animal size
Species information
- Lipotriches sp. (genus) Scientific name
- Halictid bee Common name
- Not Sensitive
- Local native
- Non-Invasive
- Up to 776m Recorded at altitude
- 74 images trained Machine learning
- External link More information
Record quality
- Images or audio
- More than one media file
- Confirmed by an expert moderator
- Nearby sighting(s) of same species
- GPS evidence of location
- Description
- Additional attributes
