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A variety of the cuckoo bee was apparently attracted by new flowers appearing after fires in the Smokies.
The insect becomes the 21,081st species discovered in one of the most bio-rich places on Earth.
The latest buzz from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the discovery of a new bee never before reported in the 522,527-acre expanse of forest that straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee line. This summer, scientists researching the effects of the 2016 Chimney Tops II fire discovered the bee, Epeolus inornatus, a variety of cellophane-cuckoo bee. It was the 21,081st species tallied so far in the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, an unprecedented effort begun some 23 years ago to catalog every living species in the park.
After the fires had burned across forested slopes, new flowering plants emerged that apparently attracted the bee to the Baskins Creek watershed area in Sevier County, Tennessee, says Will Kuhn, director of science and research. All told, the inventory has revealed 10,412 species new to the park, and 1,028 species new to science.
“Major events like the Chimney Tops II fires have cascading effects, and we don’t always know which way things will turn out,” says Kuhn. “This is a testament to the importance of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. We need to learn how the park’s ecosystems bounce back from previous natural disasters so that we can predict the effects of future disturbances, like climate change.”
Learn more at Discover Life In America, which manages the biological inventory: dlia.org.
The story above appears in our March/April 2021 issue.
