Critically Endangered
Rusty patched bumble bee
Bombus affinis
Rusty patched bumble bee is a bumblebee endemic to North America.
Appearance
On January 10, 2017, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service placed B. Affinis on the list of endangered species, making the rusty patched bumble bee the first bee to be added to the list in the continental United States (seven species of yellow-faced bees native to the Hawaiian islands were added in 2016).
Range and habitat
B. Affinis requires three different types of habitats (each for foraging, nesting, and hibernating) that are geographically close to one another, making this species particularly vulnerable to extinction. In addition, B. Affinis has been found at elevations as high as 1600 m. In terms of their hibernating habitat, little information is known.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
In fact, the flower structure and mechanism by that it is pollinated indicate that it is adapted to foragers such as B. Affinis, that can separate the outer and inner petals of the flower. This pollen foraging behavior is strikingly similar to bees of the genus Apis.
Similar to other social insects, egg laying by B. Affinis workers is suppressed by the presence of a dominant queen that is capable of reproducing.
In crisis
Its numbers have declined in 87% of its historical habitat range. In April 2010 it was assessed as Endangered in Canada, through the work of Sheila Colla and colleagues. The colony odor is very similar to that of Bombus terricola, that makes it difficult for predators and parasites to differentiate between the two species.
Rusty patched bumble bee is Critically 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 Rusty patched bumble bee, Wikidata item Q2297570. 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.
