Guwahati: There are approximately 22,000 bees known to science worldwide, of which almost 85% are solitary. Among them, reportedly 20% belong to the kleptoparasitic type.
Researchers from the Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India have found a kleptoparasitic bee species Euaspis polynesia for the first time in the country from the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, which are good indicators for assessing bee communities.
Bees of genus Euaspis belong to the family Megachilidae (commonly known as leaf cutter bees as they cut leaves to prepare lining in their nests) and are kleptoparasitic with a black head and thorax, and red abdomen that lacks yellow maculations.
They range in body length from 6–17 mm. Euaspis contains 12 described species globally distributed mainly in Africa and Southeastern Asia.
Previously, India was represented by three species of genus Euaspis. The present study recorded Euaspis polynesia for the first time from India.
The present study has also contributed to the collation of the data on distribution patterns and floral associations of all the Euaspis species from India.
Euaspis polynesia, commonly known as Sunda chilli-tail leaf cutter bee, despite appearing unusual and being widely distributed throughout Southeast Asia, is a regionally rare and poorly studied species.
Members of the genus differ from most kleptoparasitic bees, which secretly enter the unfinished nests of their hosts to lay their eggs.
Euaspis burrow into fully developed nests of their hosts, which are typically woodborer bees (Lithurgus spp.) or resin bees (Megachile spp), members of Megachilidae family.
Kleptoparasitism is derived from the Latin meaning “parasitism by theft”. This life-history strategy is perhaps most well documented in birds, where a female cuckoo lays her egg in a host nest and then disappears, leaving the host parents to nourish her offspring in her place.
Brood parasitism is widespread in insects and has evolved multiple times independently in diverse lineages including solitary bees. Solitary bees build nests in which their young develop. Most species excavate their nests in the ground. Others build their nests in soft wood, pre-existing cavities or simply mounted on the external surfaces of trees, stones, buildings, or other structures.
All nests have a single function to provide food and shelter for developing bee larvae. Nests typically contain a series of between one and ten compartments, or brood cells, each of which is provisioned by the adult female with a mixture of pollen and nectar. After the female has provisioned a cell, she deposits a single egg on the pollen mass within.
The brood cell is then closed and the egg is left to develop on the pollen mass. In cuckoo bees, locate the nest of an appropriate host bee using a combination of visual and olfactory cues and deposit an egg in a single cell of the host’s nest. The offspring of the parasite then feeds and completes its development on the provisions gathered by the host bee for its own offspring.
K.A. Subramanian, scientist-E & officer-in-charge, Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India told East Mojo, “Bee guilds with different functional traits may exhibit distinctive preferences and requirements for varied habitat dynamics. As a result, guild profiles can be created as baselines and, when taken into account along with other techniques for evaluating bee communities, give more information on the variables affecting bee communities within these habitats and their responses to disturbance, allowing for better inferences about the health of the ecosystem.”
“To be put in simple terms, kleptoparasitic bees have great potential as indicators for assessing bee communities,” he said.
Dibyajyoti Ghosh, senior research fellow/ doctoral candidate at Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, said Kleptoparasitic bee species constitute a critical component of bee functional diversity and are characterized by striking colour patterns which ease primary identification.
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In our case, E. polynesia also exhibits a red abdomen which is strikingly different from other bees. From so far locality records of the other species of Euaspis, it exhibits established distribution in Southern and Central parts of India. The present study records the first confirmed occurrence of the genus from the Eastern Himalayas.
“Arunachal Pradesh is a globally recognised biodiversity hotspot, and it is ardent that further sampling efforts shall yield many more treasures from the region. In order to strengthen the management of information and knowledge to support decision-making related to the conservation of at-risk bees, it is imperative to replicate the study efforts to understand the ecological regime better.” Ghosh said.
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