MEET ‘LUCIFER’ Scientists discover a bee with devil horns

A SCIENTIST was observing a critically endangered wildflower in Australia when she first spotted the bee, sprouting something that closer inspection revealed to be a pair of “demon-like horns.”

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She later decided there was only one suitable name for the newly identified species: Megachile Lucifer.

“I was super excited to find it,” said Kit Prendergast, a native bee scientist who discovered the insect in 2019 as she conducted a survey in the Bremer Ranges in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Prendergast is the lead author of a report on the species of native bee, which was published in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research on Monday.

Prendergast collected the bee using an entomological sweep net - a tool used to collect insects - during a survey to sample pollinators around populations of the rare Australian wildflower Marianthus aquilonaris. She later placed the bee under a microscope. Its horns each measured 0.9 millimeters in length and almost half as long as the head width in profile.