Like living mood rings, these bees change color when it turns humid
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(See our AI policy here .) When the weather gets muggy, iridescent bees shift their metallic hue, a new study finds. The insects are a rich blue-green when the humidity is low. But as moisture levels in the air rise, their color changes: It turns a coppery green.
Many bees have a shimmery exoskeleton. So this reversible mood-ring–like effect might be quite common, scientists now say. The day-to-day color of other bees and insects might similarly change with humidity.
Jorge De La Cruz is a college student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There, he’s training as an evolutionary biologist. He first noticed the color-change effect while preparing bee specimens for preservation and study.
This was at the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration. Museum scientists often place insect specimens in a moist chamber. It makes them more flexible for mounting and imaging.
And under moist conditions, some bees appeared to starkly shift their color. This caught De La Cruz’s attention. “It can be a bit alarming when you’re not expecting it,” says Madeleine Ostwald.
This ecologist works at Queen Mary University of London in England. De La Cruz and Ostwald teamed up with two other researchers to look into this further. They shared what they learned April 22 in Biology Letters.
The team studied two dozen museum bee specimens. All were fine-striped sweat bees (Agapostemon subtilior). The bees were exposed to high and low humidity for 55 hours each.
After each exposure, the team took photos.
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