ZooSoc Takeover: Learn your A, Bee, Cs

stoutj123

Blonde Tailed Bumblebees

  1. Does the bee have an all ginger thorax or a striped yellow/ black thorax?
  • All ginger – Bombus muscorum – moss carder bee – see Figure 11.
  • Yellow/ black – Bombus distinguendus – great yellow bumblebee – see Figure 12.
Bombus_muscorum_thistle
Figure 11: Bombus muscuorum. Note: this species looks similar to Bombus pascuorum (Figure 10) so be sure to double check the tail colour! Image credit: Gail Hampshire, via Wikimedia Commons.
bombus-distinguendus_5no.jpg
Figure 12: Bombus distinguendus. Note: this species is very rare, if found, please photograph and submit your record to the National Biodiversity Data Centre. Image credit: Unattributed, BWARS.

References:

For this key, I used a PDF of a “Crash course in Bumblebee identification” by Dr. Úna Fitzpatrick available from the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

This week ZooSoc (@ZooSoc) are taking over CampusBuzz! Expect a new blog everyday written by student members of the society. Today’s entry was written by Eoin Dillon, a 4th year Zoology student at TCD. He’s mainly interested in invertebrates, especially insects and rock pool fauna. He would love to work with insects in the future, either through study or in conservation).

ZooSocTakeover2

 

 

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