Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Resin Use by Stingless Bees: A Review.

ABSTRACT: Stingless bees (Meliponini) are highly social bees that are native to tropical and sub-tropical ecosystems. Resin use is vital to many aspects of stingless bee colony function. Stingless bees use resin to build essential nest structures, repel predators, and kill would-be invaders. Furthermore, resin-derived compounds have been found to enrich the cuticular chemical profiles of many stingless bee species, and resin may play an important role in shaping the microbial communities associated with stingless bees and their nests. Despite its importance for colony function, previous reviews of resin use by stingless bees are lacking. This topic grows increasingly urgent as changes in beekeeping and land use practices occur, potentially diminishing stingless bees' ability to incorporate resin into the nest environment. In this article, we review existing literature on resin use by stingless bees and discuss potential areas of future research.

SUBMITTER: Shanahan M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8397191 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

Resin Use by Stingless Bees: A Review.

Shanahan Maggie M Spivak Marla M

Insects 20210811 8

Stingless bees (Meliponini) are highly social bees that are native to tropical and sub-tropical ecosystems. Resin use is vital to many aspects of stingless bee colony function. Stingless bees use resin to build essential nest structures, repel predators, and kill would-be invaders. Furthermore, resin-derived compounds have been found to enrich the cuticular chemical profiles of many stingless bee species, and resin may play an important role in shaping the microbial communities associated with s ...[more]

PMID: 34442285

Similar Datasets

Nutrients or resin? - The relationship between resin and food foraging in stingless bees.

Project description:Stingless bees are important pollinators in tropical forests. Yet, we know little about their foraging behavior (e.g., their nutritional requirements or their floral sources visited for resource collection). Many stingless bees not only depend vitally on pollen and nectar for food but also on resin for nest building and/or defense. However, it is unclear whether the large effort devoted to collecting resin as a non-food resource by certain stingless bees affects their foraging behavior. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed differences in foraging patterns (i.e., foraging activity, proportion of collected resources, and specialization in plants visited) and resource nutritional composition (i.e., sucrose amount in nectar and amino acids in pollen) of seven different stingless bee species (eleven wild colonies) in north-western Ecuador with a particular focus on the role of resin collection. We found that species with a high resin intake tended to be more active than species with a low resin intake. The foragers per minute invested for pollen collection were similar across all species. Sucrose intake per minute differed between some species but was not affected by increased resin intake. Interestingly, high and low resin collectors partly differed in the plants visited for pollen collection. Pollen amino acid profiles largely, but not completely, overlapped between the two resin collection groups. Our findings show that the foraging patterns and plant choices of stingless bees may vary depending on their resin intake, highlighting the need for more research focusing on resin collection and use by stingless bees.

| S-EPMC10853648 | biostudies-literature

Stingless bees

Project description:Phylogenomics of the stingless bees (Apidae, Meliponini)

| PRJNA1169349 | ENA

Stingless Bees

Project description:Stingless Bees Raw sequence reads

| PRJNA753230 | ENA

Stingless bees

Project description:Stingless bees Metagenome

| PRJNA1060844 | ENA

Stingless bees transcriptome

Project description:Stingless bee transcriptome sick bees

| PRJEB22201 | ENA

Queens remate despite traumatic mating in stingless bees.

Project description:Males can control female reproduction using genital plugs to impede access by rivals. In social bees, ants, and wasps, plugging may involve traumatic mating, with females being harmed. In stingless bees, chances are that plugs may promote ovarian activan, and are thought to ensure single mating-a general tendency among the social Hymenoptera. However, understanding on relationships between mating plugs, traumatic mating, and mating systems in stingless bees remains limited. To address this, we (1) compared mated queens of 7 Neotropical species to understand the patterns of copulatory marks in females and (2) compared pre- and post-mating genitalia of males and females in Melipona fasciculata to depict plug functional morphology. Data revealed an unprecedented consequence of mating in stingless bees: the characteristic marks left by mating plugs on female abdomens and the inferences that can be made from them. To our surprise, in 1 species M. fasciculata we found that queens retain the plug long after mating, and may carry it for the rest of their lives. All the other 6 species retained the plug for only a short period. Remated queens were only found in M. seminigra, whose multiple copulatory marks match previous findings of polyandry in this species. Our study shows that queens can remate, and suggests that male genital morphology may determine in part the time persistence of plugs. We conclude that traumatic mating plugs do not fully prevent remating in stingless bees and that mating systems are not uniform in this group. Nonetheless, exceptional cases of facultative polyandry in social insects-for example, when mating plugs fail-may confirm a general tendency for single mating in close link with efficient mating plugs.

| S-EPMC8836336 | biostudies-literature

Absence of Leishmaniinae and Nosematidae in stingless bees.

Project description:Bee pollination is an indispensable component of global food production and plays a crucial role in sustainable agriculture. The worldwide decline of bee populations, including wild pollinators, poses a threat to this system. However, most studies to date are situated in temperate regions where Apini and Bombini are very abundant pollinators. Tropical and subtropical regions where stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are generally very common, are often overlooked. These bees also face pressure due to deforestation and agricultural intensification as well as the growing use and spread of exotic pollinators as Apis mellifera and Bombus species. The loss or decline of this important bee tribe would have a large impact on their provided ecosystem services, in both wild and agricultural landscapes. The importance of pollinator diseases, which can contribute to decline, has not been investigated so far in this bee tribe. Here we report on the first large pathogen screening of Meliponini species in southern Brazil. Remarkably we observed that there was an absence of Leishmaniinae and Nosematidae, and a very low occurrence of Apicystis bombi. Our data on disease prevalence in both understudied areas and species, can greatly improve our knowledge on the distribution of pathogens among bee species.

| S-EPMC5009319 | biostudies-literature

Sequence and expression pattern of the germ line marker vasa in honey bees and stingless bees.

Project description:Queens and workers of social insects differ in the rates of egg laying. Using genomic information we determined the sequence of vasa, a highly conserved gene specific to the germ line of metazoans, for the honey bee and four stingless bees. The vasa sequence of social bees differed from that of other insects in two motifs. By RT-PCR we confirmed the germ line specificity of Amvasa expression in honey bees. In situ hybridization on ovarioles showed that Amvasa is expressed throughout the germarium, except for the transition zone beneath the terminal filament. A diffuse vasa signal was also seen in terminal filaments suggesting the presence of germ line cells. Oocytes showed elevated levels of Amvasa transcripts in the lower germarium and after follicles became segregated. In previtellogenic follicles, Amvasa transcription was detected in the trophocytes, which appear to supply its mRNA to the growing oocyte. A similar picture was obtained for ovarioles of the stingless bee Melipona quadrifasciata, except that Amvasa expression was higher in the oocytes of previtellogenic follicles. The social bees differ in this respect from Drosophila, the model system for insect oogenesis, suggesting that changes in the sequence and expression pattern of vasa may have occurred during social evolution.

| S-EPMC3036037 | biostudies-literature

Accelerated landings in stingless bees are triggered by visual threshold cues.

Project description:Most flying animals rely primarily on visual cues to coordinate and control their trajectory when landing. Studies of visually guided landing typically involve animals that decrease their speed before touchdown. Here, we investigate the control strategy of the stingless bee Scaptotrigona depilis, which instead accelerates when landing on its narrow hive entrance. By presenting artificial targets that resemble the entrance at different locations on the hive, we show that these accelerated landings are triggered by visual cues. We also found that S. depilis initiated landing and extended their legs when the angular size of the target reached a given threshold. Regardless of target size, the magnitude of acceleration was the same and the bees aimed for the same relative position on the target suggesting that S. depilis use a computationally simple but elegant 'stereotyped' landing strategy that requires few visual cues.

| S-EPMC7480146 | biostudies-literature

Bees for development: Brazilian survey reveals how to optimize stingless beekeeping.

Project description:Stingless bees are an important asset to assure plant biodiversity in many natural ecosystems, and fulfill the growing agricultural demand for pollination. However, across developing countries stingless beekeeping remains an essentially informal activity, technical knowledge is scarce, and management practices lack standardization. Here we profited from the large diversity of stingless beekeepers found in Brazil to assess the impact of particular management practices on productivity and economic revenues from the commercialization of stingless bee products. Our study represents the first large-scale effort aiming at optimizing stingless beekeeping for honey/colony production based on quantitative data. Survey data from 251 beekeepers scattered across 20 Brazilian States revealed the influence of specific management practices and other confounding factors over productivity and income indicators. Specifically, our results highlight the importance of teaching beekeepers how to inspect and feed their colonies, how to multiply them and keep track of genetic lineages, how to harvest and preserve the honey, how to use vinegar traps to control infestation by parasitic flies, and how to add value by labeling honey containers. Furthermore, beekeeping experience and the network of known beekeepers were found to be key factors influencing productivity and income. Our work provides clear guidelines to optimize stingless beekeeping and help transform the activity into a powerful tool for sustainable development.

| S-EPMC4380461 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data