Endangered
Bombus dahlbomii
Bombus dahlbomii
Bombus dahlbomii, also known as the moscardón (or mangangá, from Guarani: mamanga), is a bumblebee endemic to southern South American temperate forests.
Appearance
B. Dahlbomii is predominantly red-orange in color. The thorax of the bee is completely red-orange while the abdomen is generally a lighter shade of orange with a small amount of lightening/discoloration towards the end. The head, wing and leg region of B. Dahlbomii are distinctly black in color.
B. Dahlbomii queens usually have relatively heavy body masses of around 0.5-1.5 grams and large head-to-tail lengths of up to 4 cm.
Range and habitat
B. Dahlbomii is the only native bumblebee species in southern South America. Its range extends from 30 degrees southwards to the southern tip of mainland South America. It is endemic to temperate forest regions in central/southern Patagonia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Queens forage for nectar and pollen that are used to feed the initial brood of a new colony nest site. The foraging activity of queens usually stops once the first brood develops into fully mature workers that can forage to feed immature siblings and alleviate the queen's need to perform such duties.
Once workers begin foraging activities, B. Dahlbomii queens seem to venture out of nests less frequently, but are still found in the outside of nests quite often.
In crisis
The decline of its populations started with the introduction of Bombus terrestris and B. Ruderatus into Chile to serve as commercial pollinators. B. Dahlbomii population decline can also be attributed to the pathogen spillover of the parasitic protozoan Apicystis bombi, that was co-introduced with B. Terrestris. Although the population decline can be linked to the introduction of alien species, B. Terrestris and B. Ruderatus, the exact mechanisms that account for the decline in B. Dahlbomii population are not completely understood.
Research indicates that exploitative/competitive advantage and pathogen introduction account for some part of the population decline in Patagonia.
Bombus dahlbomii is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bombus dahlbomii, Wikidata item Q1948882. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
