Sticky Tipped Satyr Orchid and Cuckoo Bee Discovery

This is Satyrium rhynchanthum, the sticky tipped satyr. It is a sweet smelling flower that grows in running water of a mountain stream.

Even more exciting for the team, was finding this cuckoo bee at a plant, with pollinia attached to the underside of its mouthparts. Both plant and bee have been taken to the lab for microscope analysis to see if the pollinia on the bee match those of the flower...

So far, the team has confirmed that the pollen on the bee looks slightly different to the pollen on this particular flower. This cuckoo bee has definitely visited another orchid but we have not been which type of orchid yet. Interestingly, this genus of bees parasitize other bee species.

This is a close-up image of Disperis paludosa, an oil producing orchid...

This is the pollinia (a unique feature to orchids where the pollen grains are kept). This attaches to the body of an oil collecting bee when visiting an orchid just as it does to these tweezers in this photo.