Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 37, Pages 16207-16211Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006299107
Keywords
ancestral state reconstruction; apidae; divergence dating; kleptoparasitism; molecular phylogeny
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [DEB 0709956, DEB 0814544]
- [MSM0021620828]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [0814544] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Apidae is the most speciose and behaviorally diverse family of bees. It includes solitary, eusocial, socially parasitic, and an exceptionally high proportion of cleptoparasitic species. Cleptoparasitic bees, which are brood parasites in the nests of other bees, have long caused problems in resolving the phylogenetic relationships within Apidae based on morphological data because of the tendency for parasites to converge on a suite of traits, making it difficult to differentiate similarity caused by common ancestry from convergence. Here, we resolve the evolutionary history of apid cleptoparasitism by conducting a detailed, comprehensive molecular phylogenetic analysis of all 33 apid tribes (based on 190 species), including representatives from every hypothesized origin of cleptoparasitism. Based on Bayesian ancestral state reconstruction, we show that cleptoparasitism has arisen just four times in Apidae, which is fewer times than previously estimated. Our results indicate that 99% of cleptoparasitic apid bees form a monophyletic group. Divergence time estimates reveal that cleptoparasitism is an ancient behavior in bees that first evolved in the late Cretaceous 95 Mya [95% highest posterior density (HPD) = 87-103]. Our phylogenetic analysis of the Apidae sheds light on the macroevolution of a bee family that is of evolutionary, ecological, and economic importance.
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