It isn’t every day that a new species of bee is found. In fact, it has been more than 20 years since a new member of this particular group of bees has been described, until now.

While surveying an area of endangered wildflowers in Western Australia, a bee was seen that didn’t look like any of the others. Kit Prendergast is a research fellow at the Curtin School of Molecular and Life Sciences as well as the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research, which described the new bee.

The bee is named Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer. Quite a devilish name, and with good reason.

In a statement about the find, Prendergast said:

“I discovered the species while surveying a rare plant in the Goldfields and noticed this bee visiting both the endangered wildflower and a nearby mallee tree. The female had these incredible little horns on her face. When writing up the new species description, I was watching the Netflix show Lucifer […] and the name just fit perfectly.”

Sometimes even scientists have fun while naming creatures, as was clearly the case here.

The horns are only present on the female bees, which is unusual. Researchers don’t yet know what they use these horns for, but it could be used for fighting or defending their nest sites, or possibly to help them to better get the pollen out of specific flowers.

If scientists want to know for sure, they will need to start studying them closer as soon as possible because even though these bees were only recently identified, they are already likely endangered.

The area where the bee was found is a popular region for mining, which means many of the wildflowers and other food or nesting resources are threatened. Prendergast wrote about this, saying:

“Many mining companies still don’t survey for native bees so we may be missing undescribed species, including those that play crucial roles in supporting threatened plants and ecosystems.”

Hopefully this devilish bee can get the protection that it needs to thrive long into the future, even if its past is still a mystery.

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