Franklin's bumblebee

Franklin's bumblebee (Bombus franklini) is one of the most narrowly distributed bumblebee species,[2] making it a critically endangered bee of the western United States.[3] It lives only in a 190-by-70-mile (310 by 110 km) area in southern Oregon and northern California, between the Coast and Sierra-Cascade mountain ranges. It was last seen in 2006.[1] Franklin's bumblebee collects nectar and pollen from several wildflowers, such as lupine, California poppy, and horsemint, which causes it to be classified as a generalist forager.[4]

Franklin's bumblebee
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apidae
Genus: Bombus
Subgenus: Bombus
Species:
B. franklini
Binomial name
Bombus franklini
(Frison, 1921)

Description

Franklin's bumblebee is distinguished from other bumblebees by a solid black abdomen, with yellow anteriorly on the thorax in a U-shaped pattern.[5] Females have black hair on their faces and the vertices, with some light hairs mixed above and below their antennal bases, while most similar bumblebee species have yellow.[6] Males of this species are similar except their malar spaces are as long as wide, the hair on males' faces is yellow, and tergum 6 has some pale hairs laterally.[6]

Conservation

The population of this bumblebee species has decreased drastically since 1998,[7] with last sighting in Oregon, in 2006. Some sources say this species is already extinct, but until more concrete evidence is shown, it has been assigned a conservation status rank of G1, which is critically imperiled.

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 Bombus franklini and three others as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.[8][9]

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife evaluated this petition in a report for the California Fish and Game Commission completed in April 2019.[9] On June 12, 2019 the California Fish and Game Commission voted to add all four bumblebees, including Bombus franklini, to the list of protected species under the California Endangered Species Act.[10] A subsequent legal challenge of the CESA's definition of a fish as "a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals"[10] was eventually overruled, because the explicit intent was for all invertebrates (therefore including insects) to be qualified for protection under this legal definition.[11]

References
  1. Kevan, P.G. (2008). "Bombus franklini". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2008: e.T135295A4070259. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2008.RLTS.T135295A4070259.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  2. Williams, Paul H.; et al. (2012). "Unveiling cryptic species of the bumblebee subgenus Bombus s. str. worldwide with COI barcodes (Hymenoptera: Apidae)". Systematics and Biodiversity. 10 (1): 21–56. doi:10.1080/14772000.2012.664574.
  3. Jeff Barnard (24 June 2010). "Group seeks endangered listing for Franklin's bumblebee". USA Today. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  4. Bombus franklini. Encyclopedia of Life.
  5. Franklin's bumble bee may be extinct. Phys.org. 26 May 2009.
  6. Bumble bees: Franklin’s bumble bee (Bombus franklini). Archived 2017-10-22 at the Wayback Machine Xerces Society.
  7. NatureServe. 2015. Bombus franklini. NatureServe Explorer Version 7.1. Accessed 4 March 2016.
  8. Hatfield R, Jepsen S, Jordan SF, Blackburn M and Code A. 2018. A Petition to the State of California Fish and Game Commission. https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=161902&inline
  9. California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 2019. EVALUATION OF THE PETITION FROM THE XERCES SOCIETY, DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, AND THE CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY TO LIST FOUR SPECIES OF BUMBLE BEES AS ENDANGERED UNDER THE CALIFORNIA ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT. https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=166804&inline
  10. Weiland P. 2019. Fish and Game Commission Adds Four Bumble Bees to Candidate List. Endangered Species Law and Policy. https://www.endangeredspecieslawandpolicy.com/fish-and-game-commission-adds-four-bumble-bees-to-candidate-list
  11. "ALMOND ALLIANCE OF CALIFORNIA et al., v. FISH AND GAME COMMISSION et al" (PDF). May 31, 2022.
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