World's largest bumblebee threatened by invasives
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- Bombus dahlbomii (the moscardón) is the world's largest bumblebee species, with females reaching 4cm in length and weighing up to 1.5g, and is endemic to the temperate forest-clad mountains of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile.
- The moscardón uniquely pollinates red-flowered native plants like the Chilean bellflower (Lapageria rosea) and Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria aurea) using a special receptor system to detect and distinguish red — a color most bees cannot perceive.
- Populations have collapsed since the 1980s after two invasive European bumblebees — Bombus ruderatus and Bombus terrestris — were imported to Chile for commercial agricultural pollination and subsequently spread across Argentina and Chile.
- The invasive species outcompete the moscardón, introduce novel pathogens and diseases, and also accelerate the spread of invasive European plants like broom — and are now too widespread to eradicate.
- The nomination came from researcher Anton Gradišek in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a partner in a bioacoustics project studying the endangered bumblebee, who told the Guardian: "Bumblebees are the pandas of the insect world."
- The profile is part of the Guardian's annual invertebrate of the year series running 3–12 August, with reader voting to open once all nominees have been profiled.
Why it matters: The moscardón's decline is functionally irreversible — the invasive European bumblebees imported in the 1980s for Chilean agriculture are now too widespread to eradicate, so the loss of Patagonia's largest native pollinator also disrupts endemic plants like Lapageria rosea and dependent species like the mites that live on the giant bumble. The case illustrates how a single well-intentioned commercial import four decades ago continues to reshape a continent's ecology.
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