Endangered
Crotch's bumble bee
Bombus crotchii
Crotch's bumble bee is a wasp, bee, or ant in the family Apidae (order Hymenoptera) — Bombus crotchii, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
This species could be confused with Bombus californicus or Bombus occidentalis, as they have color patterns similar to Crotch's bumble bee. Queens and workers (females) have a black head and thorax, with yellow on the dorsal anterior thorax, and sometimes yellow on the scutellum. T2 is usually yellow, sometimes black medially.
Crotch's bumble bee is characterized as a short- or medium- tongue length species.
Range and habitat
Even so, most observations of this species occur in southern California in coastal areas. The overwintering this bumblebee usually lives in not known, but it is believed that they have similar behaviors to other bumblebees in this respect, overwintering under leaf litter or soft soil. Crotch's bumble bee inhabits grassland and scrub areas, requiring a hotter and drier environment than other bumble bee species, and can only tolerate a very narrow range of climatic conditions.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Life history
Life history follows the order: complete metamorphosis in moths and beetles, nymphs in grasshoppers and bugs. This page does not invent a host plant that no source named.
In crisis
It is classified as endangered due to the impacts of pesticides, climate change, and human development. Crotch's bumble bee is a state endangered species that was last evaluated by IUCN in April 2014. Another prominent issue for this bumble bee species is that of climate change. As stated above, this species is a major climatic specialist compared to other bumble bees, so climate change and increasing aridity are significant threats to Crotch's bumble bee.
Inbreeding is probably also becoming problematic, especially as B. Crotchii populations continue to decline. A petition was submitted by the Xerces society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Center for Food Safety to the California Fish and Game Commission in October 2018 to list Crotch's bumble bee and three others as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.
Crotch's bumble bee 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 Crotch's bumble bee, Wikidata item Q2109267. 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.
