COLOMBO — Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island, lies far away from the United States and is just one-sixth the size of California. But interestingly, one of the three newly identified wild bee species described in California has been bestowed with a Sinhala name, a language exclusive to Sri Lanka. All three bees look alike and display an unusual metallic sheen on their body, so one of them was named Lasioglossum (Sphecodogastra) dilisena, as the word dilisena means “shining” in the Sinhala language. Thilina Hettiarachchi, a PhD student at the University of Manitoba in Canada and the first author of the study, suggested the inclusion. “Given that Thilina hails from Sri Lanka, it seemed apt to have a Sinhala word incorporated into one of the names, as scientific names are typically in Latin or Latinized Greek, which most people in North America may not speak. Then there’s no particular reason why Sinhala would be any less understandable,” said Jason Gibbs, associate professor of entomology at Manitoba University who is Hettiarachchi’s supervisor and a study co-author. “We strive to find names for new species that are descriptive, easy to pronounce and celebrate diversity, and the word ‘dilisena’ embodies all these features,” Gibbs told Mongabay. Part Sinhala name Given the metallic sheen that gives the bee’s body its iridescence, the team has aptly named the second bee as Lasioglossum (Sphecodogastra) iridescens, highlighting its iridescent nature and the color reflected by its metallic sheen. The third bee has been named Lasioglossum (Sphecodogastra) silveirai,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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