Chestnut-fronted Macaw vs Clover Melitta

Ara severus compared with Melitta leporina

Key Differences

  • Chestnut-fronted Macaw is Least Concern while Clover Melitta is Near Threatened.

Taxonomic Classification

Rank Chestnut-fronted Macaw Clover Melitta
Kingdom same Animalia (Animals) Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Chordata (Chordates) Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Class Aves (Birds) Insecta (Insects)
Order Psittaciformes (Parrots) Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees & Wasps)
Family Psittacidae (True Parrots) Melittidae
Genus Ara (Macaws) Melitta
Species Ara severus Melitta leporina

Evolutionary Relationship

Chestnut-fronted Macaw and Clover Melitta share a common ancestor at the Kingdom level: Animalia. (Animals)

Conservation Status

Chestnut-fronted Macaw

LC — Least Concern

Clover Melitta

NT — Near Threatened

Physical Characteristics

Attribute Chestnut-fronted Macaw Clover Melitta
Diet
Average Lifespan
Average Length
Average Weight

Habitat & Geographic Range

Chestnut-fronted Macaw

Habitat

Typically found in various aerial, terrestrial, and aquatic environments.

Range

Widely distributed across Europe (Belgium, Norway), North America (United States), and South America (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela).

Clover Melitta

Habitat

Typically found in virtually all terrestrial and freshwater habitats.

Range

Distributed across Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden. Listed as Near Threatened, this species requires ongoing monitoring to prevent population decline.

Chestnut-fronted Macaw

A medium-sized macaw of Central and South American tropical forests from southern Mexico to Bolivia and Brazil, chestnut-fronted macaws have predominantly green plumage with a chestnut forehead, red shoulder patches, and blue flight feathers. The smallest of the true macaws, they inhabit forest edges, savannas, and secondary woodland and often raid crops, making them locally unpopular with farmers. They are popular aviary birds, but wild populations face pressure from trapping and deforestation.

Clover Melitta

The clover Melitta (Melitta leporina) is a solitary bee in the family Melittidae, order Hymenoptera, with a distribution centered on temperate Europe including Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden. Unlike social bees, Melitta species are ground-nesting solitary bees in which each female constructs and provisions her own nest independently. M. leporina is oligolectic — highly specialized in its pollen collection — gathering pollen almost exclusively from leguminous plants, particularly clovers (Trifolium), alfalfa (Medicago sativa), and related species in the family Fabaceae. This specialization makes the bee closely dependent on the availability of flowering legume patches within foraging distance of nesting sites. Nest sites are in bare or sparsely vegetated sandy or loamy soils, often in sunny, sheltered locations such as road embankments, field margins, and sandy grasslands. Adults fly from midsummer through early autumn in a single annual generation. M. leporina is classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, reflecting declining populations across much of its European range due to agricultural intensification, loss of flower-rich grasslands, reduction in diverse legume cultivation, and loss of suitable open nesting habitat. Conservation of M. leporina depends on maintaining semi-natural grassland habitats with diverse flowering legumes and accessible sandy soils for nesting, along with reduction of pesticide use that harms adult foraging and larval survival.

Shared Countries

Both species can be found in 2 countries:

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