Molecular and Behavioural Ecology of Stingless Bees.
Stingless bees (Meliponini) are a large tribe of eusocial bees living in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. With several hundred species described so far they are the largest group of eusocial bees and exhibit a wide range of behavioural adaptations. As their name implies, stingless bees lack the capacity to sting, but have evolved other highly efficient ways of colony defence, mainly based on nest architecture, but also biting, hair pulling and the use mandibular gland secretions as a chemical weapon. In pre-Columbian cultures like the Maya stingless bees were used on a large scale for honey production, and even nowadays they are used for this purpose, even thought their economic importance is much smaller than that of the now worldwide distributed honeybee Apis mellifera.
A behavioural peculiarity, which many stingless bee species exhibit, is the formation of male leks. Such congregations of many hundreds or even thousands males form at specific sites, where they form a dense cluster and can persist over several days or weeks. The males are waiting for virgin queen to arrive and to mate with them. The work of our group focuses on the proximate and ultimate mechanisms involved in the formation of such male congregations in stingless bees, employing molecular markers and behavioural observations. A further research topic involving stingless bees is their communication systems and foraging behaviour.
References:
- Galindo López, JC & Kraus, FB (2009): Cherchez la femme? Site choice of drone congregations in the stingless bee Scaptotrigona mexicana. Animal Behaviour 77: 1247-1252
- Kraus, FB, Weinhold, S, Moritz, RFA (2008): Genetic structure of drone congregations of the stingless bee Scaptotrigona mexicana. Insectes Sociaux 55: 22-27
- Sanchez, D, Kraus, FB, Hernandez, MD; et al. (2007): Experience, but not distance, influences the recruitment precision in the stingless bee Scaptotrigona mexicana. Naturwissenschaften 94: 567-573