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Abstract
Stingless bees form perennial colonies of honey-making insects. The >600 species of stingless bees, mainly Neotropical, live throughout tropical latitudes. Foragers influence floral biology, plant reproduction, microbe dispersal, and diverse ecosystem functions. As tropical forest residents since the upper Cretaceous, they have had a long evolutionary history without competition from honey bees. Most stingless bees are smaller than any Apis species and recruit nest mates to resources, while their defense strategies exclude stinging behavior but incorporate biting. Stingless bees have diversified ecologically; excel in nesting site selection and mutualisms with plants, arthropods, and microbes; and display opportunism, including co-opting plant defenses. As their biology becomes better known, applications to human endeavors are imposing selective pressures from exploitation and approaches to conservation that entail colony extraction from wildlands. Although some meliponines can adjust to new conditions, their populations shall require tropical diversity for survival and reproduction.
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Affiliation(s)
- David W Roubik
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Republic of Panamá;
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Dos Santos CF, Halinski R, de Souza Dos Santos PD, Almeida EAB, Blochtein B. Looking beyond the flowers: associations of stingless bees with sap-sucking insects. THE SCIENCE OF NATURE - NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN 2019; 106:12. [PMID: 30927121 DOI: 10.1007/s00114-019-1608-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2018] [Revised: 02/13/2019] [Accepted: 02/27/2019] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
The main sources of food for stingless bees are the nectar and pollen harvested from flowers, whereas one important kind of nesting material (i.e. wax) is produced by their own abdominal glands. Stingless bees can, nonetheless, obtain alternative resources of food and wax from exudates released by sap-sucking insects as honeydew and waxy cover, respectively. To date, there are no comprehensive studies investigating how diversified and structured the network interactions between stingless bees and sap-sucking insects are. Here, we conducted a survey of the data on relationship between stingless bees and sap-sucking insects to evaluate: (1) which resources are collected by which stingless bee species; (2) how diverse the interaction network is, using species degree and specialisation index as a proxy; and if (3) there would be any phylogenetic signal in the species degree and specialisation indices. Our findings demonstrate that approximately 21 stingless bee species like Trigona spp. and Oxytrigona spp. have been observed interacting with 11 sap-sucking species, among which Aethalion reticulatum is the main partner. From ca. 50 records, Brazil is the country with most observations (n = 38) of this type of ecological interaction. We found also that stingless bees harvest fivefold more honeydew than waxy covers on sap-sucking insects. However, we did not find any phylogenetic signal for the occurrence of this interaction, considering species degree and specialisation indices, suggesting that both traits apparently evolved independently among stingless bee species. We suggest that specific ecological demands may drive this opportunistic behaviour exhibited by stingless bees, because major sources of food are obtained from flowers and these bees produce their own wax.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charles Fernando Dos Santos
- Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Porto Alegre, RS, 90619-900, Brazil.
| | - Rosana Halinski
- Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Porto Alegre, RS, 90619-900, Brazil
| | - Patrick Douglas de Souza Dos Santos
- Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Porto Alegre, RS, 90619-900, Brazil.,Departamento de Genética, Laboratório de Biologia do Desenvolvimento de Abelhas, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Bandeirantes, 3.900, Ribeirao Preto, SP, 14040-901, Brazil
| | - Eduardo A B Almeida
- Laboratório de Biologia Comparada e Abelhas, Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, 14040-901, Brazil
| | - Betina Blochtein
- Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Porto Alegre, RS, 90619-900, Brazil
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