Social complexity in bees is not sufficient to explain lack of reversions to solitary living over long time scales.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The major lineages of eusocial insects, the ants, termites, stingless bees, honeybees and vespid wasps, all have ancient origins (> or = 65 mya) with no reversions to solitary behaviour. This has prompted the notion of a 'point of no return' whereby the evolutionary elaboration and integration of behavioural, genetic and morphological traits over a very long period of time leads to a situation where reversion to solitary living is no longer an evolutionary option.

Results

We show that in another group of social insects, the allodapine bees, there was a single origin of sociality > 40 mya. We also provide data on the biology of a key allodapine species, Halterapis nigrinervis, showing that it is truly social. H. nigrinervis was thought to be the only allodapine tha

SUBMITTER: Chenoweth LB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2231370 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature