A New Bee Species Was Discovered in Texas and Oklahoma. Here's What to Know

Perhaps 1,500 wild bee species are found in Texas.

NOTE: this article was originally published to the Houston Chronicle's Apple News channel on December 3, 2024. It was written by Catherine Dominguez.

Scientists have discovered a new bee found only in Texas and Oklahoma and documented its interaction with plants in both states.

According to a news release from the University of Oklahoma, a recent study published in Ecology and Evolution identified and the new species as Andrena androfovea.

“The process of documenting bee biodiversity started centuries ago, but scientists are still discovering new species all the time” said James Hung, OU assistant professor of biology and co-author of the paper.

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, there are at least 1,100 native bee species in Texas, possibly up to 1,500. Bees are the primary pollinators of native plants, and most are solitary and do not defend their nests, so they pose little risk of stings.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 75-85% of all flowering plants on Earth require animal pollinators to survive and reproduce. Bees are the most important members of this group, especially in temperate ecosystems like those in Oklahoma. There are over 1,500 species of Andrena bees in the world, making it one of the largest genera of animals on the planet. 

However, this newly discovered matte blue species does not fit into any of the existing 104 subgenera of Andrena. That means it is not closely related to any Andrena bees discovered thus far and makes this a significant discovery.

“Subgenera are groups of species that are structurally similar and closely related. This new species, however, is so distantly related to any other Andrena that we think it has formed its own branch on the Andrena family tree about 12.6 million years ago,” said Silas Bossert, assistant professor at Washington State University and lead author of the study. “We know this because we sequenced and compared its genome to those of other bees.”

Bossert stated by using a technique called "molecular clock," scientists can approximate how much time has passed since this lineage has separated from the other bees based on differences in its genome.

According to Hung, creating a new bee subgenus is rare in recent decades and even more uncommon when a new species is discovered. Typically, new subgenera are created due to rearrangement.

Co-author John Neff collected this bee in Texas for several years before confirming its unique position in the Andrena genealogy. 

This newly discovered bee is the only species in the genus Andrena that has an affinity to plants in the family Solanaceae (tomato family). Hung captured high-quality video and photo evidence of the bee using its furry abdomen and legs to gather pollen from these plants.

“This is pretty unusual behavior for a member of the mining bee genus and really helps us showcase the unique evolutionary innovations of this new subgenus,” Hung said.