Comprehensive phylogeny of apid bees reveals the evolutionary origins and antiquity of cleptoparasitism
Abstract
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.