Neotropical swarm‐founding wasps are divided into 19 genera in the tribe Epiponini (Vespidae, Polistinae). They display extensive variation in several colony‐level traits that make them an attractive ...model system for reconstructing the evolution of social phenotypes, including caste dimorphism and nest architecture. Epiponini has been upheld as a solid monophyletic group in most phylogenetic analyses carried out so far, supported by molecular, morphological and behavioural data. Recent molecular studies, however, propose different relationships among the genera of swarm‐founding wasps. This study is based on the most comprehensive epiponine sampling so far and was analyzed by combining morphological, nesting and molecular data. The resulting phylogenetic hypothesis shows many of the traditional clades but still impacts the way certain behavioural characters, such as nest structure and castes, evolved, and thus requires some re‐interpretations. Angiopolybia as sister to the remaining Epiponini implies that nest envelopes and a casteless system are plesiomorphic in the tribe. Molecular dating points to an early tribal diversification during the Eocene (c. 55–38 Ma), with the major differentiation of current genera concentrated in the Oligocene/Miocene boundary.
Parasitoid wasps within the Vespoidea superfamily have been chronically under surveyed, thanks to the bigger attention given to the social species within that group or to the other parasitoids within ...the megadiverse Parasitica infraorder. To address that, we test a new sampling technique for the capture of parasitoid Vespoidea and other Hymenoptera in comparison to other two well stablished designs. Between the consecutive dry and wet seasons of 2014-2015 we placed sets of Malaise (MT), yellow pan (YPT) and ethanolic (ET) traps in a fragment of semideciduous Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. We hypothesised that MT is the most efficient method for sampling Hymenoptera families and lower taxa of Vespoidea, while YPT and ET would be more efficient in attracting specific taxa, given their characteristic luring mechanisms. We calculated taxa accumulation curves to evaluate expected richness. Average Taxonomic Distinctiveness (Δ+ ) was used as the continuous dependent variable in two-way ANOVAs. Faunal similarity was inspected through nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS). All tests were performed taking season and trap design as explanatory variables. MT was the most efficient in sampling total richness and Δ+ of Hymenoptera and Vespoidea lower taxa. It captured all 39 families recorded in the present study and 60 out of the 73 Vespoidea lower taxa. YPT tended to lure Diapriidae, Dryinidae, Ponerinae and Myrmicinae ants and a few taxa of Pompilidae and Mutillidae, proving its efficiency in sampling wingless and shortflying hymenopterans as well as the predators and parasites of other non-grass feeding insects. ET, although successful in estimating Hymenoptera Δ + , did not have a sufficient capture rate to give a precise estimate of total richness. It attracted, however, the social wasps Polybia jurinei Saussure and Synoeca surinama (L.), species traditionally captured by active search. Synthesis and Applications: MT is confirmed as the most efficient capture method for Hymenoptera sampling and is recommended when a survey of the whole community is intended. ET was not successful in capturing any parasitoid Vespoidea as hypothesised but, as well as the YPT, it could be used as an alternative to active searches when the taxa listed above are the focus of the survey. These results provide a better understanding of passive capture methods for Hymenoptera sampling and can be considered in future surveys aiming to investigate their diversity, distribution and improve their conservation.
Zethus wileyi Stange sp. nov. (Panama) is described and a cladistic analysis is carried in order to determine the relationship between the new species and the other species in the hilarianus ...species-group. The new species is assigned to its own new species-group due to evident differences in the morphology.
The genera Pachymenes de Saussure and Santamenes Giordani Soika are revised and the phylogenetic relationships among their species, based on external morphology and male genitalia, are presented. The ...cladistics analysis, using 22 terminal species (19 ingroup and 3 outgroup species) and 44 characters, produced a single cladogram under implied weighting. Both genera were recovered as paraphyletic, althought two major clades were formed and were well supported by the re‐sampling analysis. We propose the synonymy of Pachymenes with Santamenes, and the description of two new species: P. saussurei Grandinete n.sp. and P. riograndensis Grandinete n.sp.. New combinations are: Pachymenes novarae (de Saussure) n.comb., P. olympicus (Zavattari) n.comb., P. peregrinus (Zavattari) n.comb. and P. santanna (de Saussure) revised combination. We state the synonymy of P. obscurus orellanoides under P. obscurus consuetus, reviewing the status of the latter and raising P. consuetus to species level. Pachymenes orellanae vardyi is synonymized under P. orellanae; P. ghilianii olivaceus, P. ghilianii flavissimus and P. peruanus are proposed as synonyms of P. ghilianii; P. picturatus obscuratus is synonymized under P. laeviventris; P. picturatus nigromaculatus and P. picturatus var. intermedia are synonymized under P. picturatus and P. atra var. ornatissima get its lectotype designated and proposed as synonym of P. ater. This published work has been registered in ZooBank, http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:F1625D4F‐B9D0‐426D‐9140‐97E53A531F87.
Two new species, Zethus (Zethus) aliceae Lopes, sp. nov. (Brazil) and Z. (Zethus) sinuostylus Lopes, sp. nov. (Brazil) are described and figured. New synonymy is proposed for Zethus (Zethoides) ...biglumis Spinola, 1841 (=Zethus ferrugineus de Saussure, 1852, syn. nov.
Morphometric data for 30 species of swarming wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae: Epiponini) are presented, representing all currently recognized genera. Data are coded according to whether females that were ...shown by dissection to be egglayers are larger, similar, or smaller for each dimension than non-egglayers. These data are analysed in a phylogenetic framework with primitively social Polistes and Mischocyttarus as outgroups. Representative measurements are illustrated to show that most genera of Epiponini appear to have ancestry in a lineage that has no queen caste comparable with either the primitively social outgroups, or the more derived species of the tribe. This analysis indicates that a conspiracy of workers that operates without a queen characterizes the societies of many Epiponini, or their recent ancestors.
In this work, an alternative method for the capture of neotropical social wasps is described, which may supplement or replace the procedures commonly used in wasp surveys. The method was tested in a ...seasonal semideciduous forest in the northwest of São Paulo State, collecting a larger number of species and a greater abundance of social wasps and of other Hymenoptera than other methods also used in the same area, namely Malaise traps, bottle traps and meat baits. The proposed method was adapted from Wille (1962) who used an attractive solution based on water and honey for bee attraction. In here, the attractive solution was based on water, salt and crystal sugar, and was effective in attracting bees and solitary wasps, but mainly social wasps, which is the group of interest for this report.
The phylogenetic relationships among the four tribes of corbiculate bees (Euglossini, Bombini, Meliponini, and Apini) are controversial. There is substantial incongruence between morphological and ...molecular data, and the single origin of eusociality is questionable. The use of behavioral characters by previous workers has been restricted to some typological definitions, such as solitary and eusocial. Here, I expand the term “social” to 42 characters and present a tree based only on behavioral characters. The reconstructed relationships were similar to those observed in morphological and “total evidence” analyses, i.e., Euglossini + (Bombini + (Meliponini + Apini)), all of which support a single origin of eusociality.
Most of the studies on the bee fauna of cerrado have shown incomplete approaches, focusing on species diversity or on a fraction of the assemblage. This work presents similarities among bee species ...based on visited plants and also shows taxonomic diversity of bees for plant resource sets offered by species in a cerrado area (Pé-de-Gigante), one of the few conservation areas of cerrado in the São Paulo State, Brazil. A total of 737 specimens, belonging to 71 bee species, were collected visiting 52 plant species. Species clusters based on visited plants show that species of Epicharis, for example, are more similar among themselves than from species of other genera. In addition, bee assemblage showed a nested structure, indicating the presence of specialist species exploiting resources subsets used by generalist species under strong intra-specific and weak inter-specific competitions.
Cely and Sarmiento (2011) took issue with the cladistic analysis of relationships among species of the genus Synoeca by Andena et al. (2009a), and presented a reanalysis. They claimed that ...intraspecific variation in the genus is meaningful, and proper consideration yields a conclusion different from that of Andena et al. Both their critique and reanalysis are vitiated by numerous errors, as is shown in the present paper.
PDF
