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Looking beyond the flowers: associations of stingless bees with sap-sucking insects

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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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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Gervásio Silva Carvalho and Kedar Devkota for critically reading and providing comments on the manuscript. We would also like to thank Camila Aoki for providing us picture of hemipteran with stingless bee. CFS would like to thank the National Postdoctoral Program (PNPD) of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). P.D.S.S is grateful to CNPq for the provision of scholarships. R.H. is thankful to CAPES [13190066-4] for awarding scholarships.

Funding

BB is supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for the research grant. E.A.B.A. is grateful to the São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP (2011/09477-9) and to CNPq (459826/2014-0, 304735/2016-7).

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  1. Escola de Ciências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Porto Alegre, RS, 90619-900, Brazil

    Charles Fernando dos Santos, Rosana Halinski, Patrick Douglas de Souza dos Santos & Betina Blochtein

  2. 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

    Patrick Douglas de Souza dos Santos

  3. 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

    Eduardo A. B. Almeida

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  1. Charles Fernando dos Santos
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dos Santos, C.F., Halinski, R., de Souza dos Santos, P.D. et al. Looking beyond the flowers: associations of stingless bees with sap-sucking insects. Sci Nat 106, 12 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-019-1608-y

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