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Sticker of Yellow-green austral-nomia
Bug card No. 4901 of 4,939

Yellow-green austral-nomia

Lipotriches flavoviridis
Name means: “flavoviridis is Latin for yellow-green, after the colour of its head and body”

The yellow-green austral-nomia is a shiny little bee from Australia and nearby islands. It can be dark metallic green or shiny gold, and some even shimmer crimson red. It digs its nest in a burrow under the ground.

Lives in
All of mainland Australia, and also Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
Length
7 mm (0.28 in)
Top speed
about 17 km/h (11 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
It visits the flowers of many different plants for nectar and pollen.
For real!Photo of Yellow-green austral-nomia
Picture by Heath Hunter. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Yellow-green austral-nomia about 7 mm long (0.28 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould fly across a whole football pitch in 22 secondsmoves 670 times its own body length every second

How big is Yellow-green austral-nomia compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The female has a red tip on the end of her body.

2

The female carries pollen on white hairs on her back legs.

3

Males like to gather in groups on twigs and plant stems.

4

Males and females look so different that scientists first gave them two different names, in 1905 and 1912.

5

Scientists think it may really be several look-alike species that will one day be split up.

you asked

Most asked questions about Yellow-green austral-nomia

?What colour is the yellow-green austral-nomia?

From dark metallic green to shiny gold, sometimes with a crimson shimmer.

?Where does the yellow-green austral-nomia nest?

In burrows that it digs under the ground.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Lipotriches flavoviridis
Named by
Cockerell, 1905
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Halictidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Halictidae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Lipotriches flavoviridis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Heath Hunter. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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