Firetail

The “Firetail” Stenotritus… 😃 Ok, nothing to do with this week’s bees, but pretty stoked… 🙂

4 years ago I spotted a male Stenotritidae with an unusual bright orange tuft of bum fluff that didn’t match anything I could find in any records. (Of the five major families of native bees in Aus, Stenotritidae is by far the smallest in number of species, less than a couple dozen spread over only two genera, it’s not like trying to ID a “new looking” Lasioglossum 😅). So by 3 years ago, I was convinced it may have been an unknown species. 2 years ago Megan “introduced” me to Terry Houston (forever grateful Megan!), and I showed him the pics. He agreed it was worth a closer look. Last year he came up from Perth to collect a sample… and I gotta say, even if we didn’t find one, just getting to spend a bit of time stalking and talking bees with Terry was truly awesome 😃

During one conversation, he mentioned Faye’s recent (at the time) discovery of Megachile deanii in WA, and asked if I was familiar with the species. I said I was (and I’m not keen on common names), but added “it’s one of the ones that often gets called the Firetail resin bee”… Terry (also not keen on common names) sort of huffed/laughed and said “Firetail… anything with an orange/red back end gets called Firetail…”.

Later that morning as we went for a hunt, he said (straight faced but with a smile in his eyes) “Ok, lets see if we can nab a Firetail Stenotritus…” 😅 Anyway, point is, he got a couple, and kept me up to date on the whole process of finding and scientifically describing a species, fairly sure it was a new one, and in all that time and correspondence, we never once discussed what we might call it, we just kept calling it the Firetail Stenotritus… 😅 Tho’ I did jokingly suggest “pyrocauda” (which is a Greek/Latin mix that translates as firetail 😂).

So, just got an email from Terry… It’s finally official, published in the latest edition of The Australian Entomologist, a new species of Stenotritidae (with possible threatened/rare species status)… And Terry has named it “Stenotritus taylori“… so that’s why I’m pretty stoked… what an honour, and one off the life-long Bucket list 😃

Geraldton, Midwest WA