Hesperocolletes


Hesperocolletes douglasi, the Rottnest bee or Douglas's broad-headed bee, is a rediscovered species of plasterer bee that is endemic to Australia.
It was described from a single specimen collected in 1938 on Rottnest Island, located off the coast of Western Australia. A second specimen was found in 2019, in Banksia woodland at Pinjar, Western Australia.

Description

The bee's body is black, shiny and 12 mm long and wings were brown and up to 8 mm long.
It is about the same size as a honeybee. It is generally black and brown and moderately hairy.
Hesperocolletes douglasi is superficially like a number of other native bees and careful examination under a microscope would be required to distinguish a specimen.

Taxonomy

Bee expert Charles Michener described and named the species in 1965 on the basis of the 1938 specimen, designating it as the holotype, and created the monotypic genus Hesperocolletes for Hesperocolletes douglasi alone. Unfortunately, no record of the circumstances of capture is available.
The species, which is named for its collector, A.M. Douglas, belongs to the subfamily Paracolletinae, part of the large family Colletidae. Colletids are characterized by having a short, broad, blunt tongue .
Paracolletines have three submarginal cells in the fore wing and females usually have densely hairy hind legs. The diagnostic characters of H. douglasi can occur individually in various paracolletine bees, and it is the combination of those features that one must look for:
A further, female, specimen was found in 2015, in "an isolated woodland remnant in the Southwest Floristic Region of Western Australia... in the Gnangara-Moore River State Forest, north of Perth".
Rottnest Island contains unique flora and fauna, such as Melaleuca lanceolata and Callistris preissii, and was remote from human activities. The reduction of tall or closed forested communities, initiated by frequent fire, probably led to the extinction of this 'native bee'.
Hesperocolletes douglasi is officially listed as ‘presumed extinct’ under the Western Australian Wildlife Conservation Act. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that the species might survive somewhere in Western Australia.