Where should you go to find the most bee species in the U.S.? The warm deserts, of course. Here is one that you might find there, collected in the landscape we dismiss as empty and barren (interestingly barren in this case since it was the Petrified Forest National Park). Macrotera latior, (note, despite the "macro" in the name it is about the size of a grain of rice, but more nutritious) who feeds its babies globemallow pollen and probably only globemallow pollen. Here we touch one corner of that diverse landscape, for this is a landscape rich in plant species and rich in bees, in particular, it has an usually high ratio of bees that restrict their pollen gathering to one or a few species of plants. Would this be because these landscapes have been so stable for so many years that bees have the luxury of specializing? What about the plant side of the equation? How much of their planty energy goes into favoring the bees that are addicted to them and only them? Are these bee specialists doing most of the pollen swapping for these plants or something more slightly in a smidgenly way parasitic? I will figure that out for you for the price of one Tomahawk Missile. Photo by Sierra Williams.
