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Strange Bedfellows: these unprecedented photos show a leafcutter bee sharing its nest with a wolfspider

I stumbled across these photos while I was looking up information on leafcutter bees, and I just thought that this was too cool not to share. Captured by an amateur photographer named Laurence Sanders, the photos were taken in Queensland, Australia several years ago, and they quickly garnered the attention of both entomologists and arachnologists.

The leafcutter bee (Megachile macularis) can be seen fetching freshly-cut leaves, which she uses to line the inner walls of her nest. The wolfspider moves aside as the bee approaches, allowing her to enter the nest, and then she simply watches as the leaf is positioned along the inner wall.

Once the leaf is in position, they seem to inspect the nest together, sitting side-by-side in the entryway; the bee eventually flies off again to gather more leaves, while the wolfspider climbs back into the burrow.

The leafcutter bee seems completely at ease in the presence of the wolfspider, which is normally a voracious predator, and the wolfspider is equally unfazed by the fact that it shares its burrow with an enormous bee.

The photographer encountered this bizarre scene by accident, and he then captured a series of images over the course of about 2 days (these are just a few of the photos that were taken). During that 2-day period, the bee was seen entering the nest with pieces of foliage dozens of times, gradually constructing the walls and brood chambers of its nest, and the spider was clearly occupying the same burrow, but they did not exhibit any signs of aggression toward one another.

The photos have been examined by various entomologists and arachnologists, and those experts seem ubiquitously surprised by the behavior that the images depict. The curator of entomology at Victoria Museum, Dr. Ken Walker, noted that this may be the very first time that this behavior has ever been documented, while Dr. Robert Raven, an arachnid expert at the Queensland Museum, described it as a "bizarre" situation.

This arrangement is completely unheard of, and the images are a fascinating sight to behold.

Sources & More Info:

Brisbane Times: The Odd Couple: keen eye spies bee and spider bedfellows in 'world-first'

iNaturalist: Megachile macularis

LMAO

I think it's hilarious that hands down the worst way to learn magic is the actual rulebook. Please do not read that. It's just there for reference when something weird happens

fuck this time loop im leaving (walks into a different, worse time loop)

me when they call my name at mcdonals (i am approaching the counter)

No fucking way

Wake up, slut! New spider just dropped!

Hello everyone. It is my honor, and privilege to formally introduce you too: Hotwheels sisyphus.

This, lovely specimen, is named after the fact, it's genitalia resemble a Hotwheels track! The second bit, of its name, of course comes from the ancient legend of Sisyphus, a man who is forever cursed with rolling a boulder, up a hill. This divine punishment, reminded the researchers Bo Liu and Feng Zhang, who discovered it, of the circular copulatory tube, of the spider, which is basically like a spider uterus. It has only been found in China, and it was discovered this year! They are the only species in the genus Hotwheels. And they are a sort, of ground spider! Unfortunately, not much is known about them, since they are a relatively new species.

Female Zebra Jumping Spider (Salticus scenicus)