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Floral oil collection by male Tetrapedia bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Tetrapediini)

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Abstract

Several groups of solitary bees, known as oil-collecting bees, gather lipids from flowers that offer them as their main reward to pollinators. In the Neotropical region, oil-collecting bees belong to the tribes Centridini, Tapinotaspidini, and Tetrapediini (Apidae: Apinae). The floral oils collected by females of these groups are used as larval food or in nest construction. The interaction of these bees with oil flowers is characterized by the presence of specialized structures for oil collection on the legs that morphologically match the location and type of the oil-producing glands on flowers they visit. In addition, these bees have specialized arrays of setae (including the scopae) for oil transport. In a few genera, both sexes display such specialized structures, although floral oil collection has hitherto been regarded as an exclusively female task. Here, we report floral oil collection by males of Tetrapedia, a Neotropical genus of oil-collecting bees. We describe behavioral aspects of oil foraging by males, present data on morphological structures associated with the collection of this resource, and discuss potential hypotheses to explain the significance of floral oils in the mating system of Tetrapedia.

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Acknowledgments

SCC thanks Rosana Tidon for the research and logistic support, staff of the Reserva Ecológica do IBGE for the field work support, and Christian Rabeling for the help with SEM photographs. All authors thank Maria C. Mamede for the plant voucher identification, Gwen Gage and Barrett Klein for the illustrations of the bee behavior, and Beryl B. Simpson for the critical input on earlier versions of this manuscript. This research was partly funded by Dorothea Bennett Travel Grants, Section of Integrative Biology, UT Austin and a National Science Foundation-Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DEB-0909511) to SCC. AJCA thanks Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal for financial support (proc.no. 193.000.563/2009); GARM thanks the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for a PQ-2 fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, One University Station A6700, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Simone C. Cappellari

  2. Lab. Biol. Comparada Hymenoptera, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Caixa Postal 19020, BR-81531-980, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil

    Gabriel A. R. Melo

  3. Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade de Brasília, Campus Universitário Darcy Ribeiro, BR-70910-900, Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil

    Antonio J. C. Aguiar

  4. Central Texas Melittological Institute, 7307 Running Rope, Austin, TX, 78731, USA

    John L. Neff

Authors
  1. Simone C. Cappellari
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  2. Gabriel A. R. Melo
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  4. John L. Neff
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Correspondence to Simone C. Cappellari.

Additional information

Manuscript editor: David Tarpy

Récolte d'huile florale par les mâles de Tetrapedia (Hym. : Apidae: Tetrapediini)

Cerrado/accouplement/région néo-tropicale/abeilles récolteuses d'huile/abeilles solitaires

Das Sammeln von floralen Ölen durch Tetrapedia-Männchen (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Tetrapediini

Cerrado/Paarung/Neotropis/ölsammelnde Bienen/Ölblumen/solitäre Bienen

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Cappellari, S.C., Melo, G.A.R., Aguiar, A.J.C. et al. Floral oil collection by male Tetrapedia bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Tetrapediini). Apidologie 43, 39–50 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-011-0072-2

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