Amegilla murrayensis

Tilcayo Cats original · Amegilla · Sources and editorial assessment · Originals retention rule

Amegilla murrayensis is a blue-banded bee widespread on mainland Australia. It is a member of Zonamegilla, a group within Amegilla. Researchers have filmed it collecting pollen from tomato flowers by rapidly tapping the flower's anther cone with its head.

Identification

The bee has pale yellow facial marks and narrow abdominal hair bands. The bands are usually pale blue, occasionally with an orange tint. Scattered pale hairs make them appear broader at the sides. Females have a dark streak along at least half the hind tibia and a patch of scattered white hair near the abdominal tip. The pattern differs from A. pulchra, whose bands do not broaden in the same way.

Distribution and season

The 2017 Australian revision found the species widespread on the mainland but absent from the Tasmanian material. In the south, its main recorded activity was November to March, peaking in January. Northern records spanned the year. These regional patterns should not be reduced to one flight season for the entire continent.

Collecting pollen with vibrations

In a comparison using cherry tomato flowers, A. murrayensis produced pollen-collecting vibrations at roughly 350 Hz, compared with roughly 240 Hz in the eastern bumblebee Bombus impatiens. High-speed video showed the blue-banded bee tapping the anther cone with its head. It typically buzzed a flower once, whereas the bumblebee made repeated buzzes and spent longer on a flower.

The study suggested that this behaviour might extract pollen quickly. It did not demonstrate that the bee universally pollinates crops better than bumblebees; the authors called for direct comparisons of pollination effectiveness.

Names and identification evidence

The 2017 revision treated A. longula and A. subsalteri as synonyms of A. murrayensis. Historical names can therefore refer to the same species. The authors also encountered conflicting mitochondrial sequence results with different laboratory primers and considered possible copies of mitochondrial genes in the nuclear genome. This was a problem to investigate, not evidence for automatically splitting the bee into additional species.