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Review
. 2019 Apr 1;374(1769):20180196.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0196.

Under the radar: detection avoidance in brood parasitic bees

Jessica R Litman  1
Affiliations
Review

Under the radar: detection avoidance in brood parasitic bees

Jessica R Litman. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Brood parasitism is a specialized form of parasitism in which the offspring of a parasite develops on the food provisions gathered by a host species for its own young. Obligate brood parasitic lineages have lost the ability to acquire provisions for their young and thus rely entirely on the location of an appropriate host to serve as a food-provider. Solitary bees provide some of the most fascinating examples of brood parasitism in animals. Most solitary bees build and provision their own nests. Some, however, usurp the nests of other species of bees. These brood parasites, or 'cuckoo' bees, deposit their eggs on the pollen provisions collected by a host bee for her own offspring. The provisions stored by the host bee are not sufficient to sustain the development of both the host's larva and that of the brood parasite and the parasite must kill the offspring of its host in order to obtain enough nourishment to complete its development. As a consequence, there is fierce competition between the host bee seeking to protect her nest from attack and the brood parasite seeking to avoid detection by the host in order to successfully deposit her eggs in an appropriate nest. In this paper, I review the behaviours that allow brood parasitic bees to escape detection by their hosts. Identifying these behaviours, and placing them within the general context of strategies employed by brood parasitic bees to parasitize the nests of their hosts, is key to understanding how brood parasitic lineages may have evolved from nest-building ancestors, decrypting the selective pressures that drive evolutionary transitions from one strategy to another and, more broadly, revealing how similar selective pressures in widely divergent lineages of animals have given rise to remarkably convergent behaviours. This article is part of the theme issue 'The coevolutionary biology of brood parasitism: from mechanism to pattern'.

Keywords: Hymenoptera; bee nests; cleptoparasitism; cuckoo bees; solitary bees.

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Conflict of interest statement

I declare that I have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Bee nests are diverse in form. (a) Cross-section of the snail shell nest of Osmia bicolor, showing the yellow pollen mass in the innermost whorl of the shell, a single larva developing on the pollen and a nest plug of pebbles and other debris. (b) Cross-section of the nest of Andrena vaga, excavated in sand. Shown are the round yellow pollen mass and the egg of A. vaga deposited on top. (c) Cross-section of the nest of Megachile alpicola, built in a hollow plant stem. The nest is built from multiple layers of leaves cut from plants. The yellow-brown pollen mass is visible at the right end of the cell, upon which a single larva is seen. (d) Excavated nest cell of Colletes cunicularius. This nest cell, built in the sand, is lined with secretions produced by the Dufour's gland of the nesting female. When these secretions dry, they form a thin, cellophane-like layer that waterproofs the cell. The pollen mass, visible through the lining, is seen to the left of the photo. (e) Anthidiellum strigatum, finalizing a nest built from plant resin. All photos: Entomologie/Botanik, ETH Zürich/Albert Krebs.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Brood parasitic bees most often exhibit reduced pilosity compared with nesting bees and have lost other structures associated with nesting behaviour, such as the pollen-collecting scopa and pygidial and basitibial plates. (a) Sleeping female Ammobatoides abdominalis; (b) Stelis signata; (c) sleeping male and female Coelioxys afra; (d) female Melecta luctuosa; (e) female Epeoloides coecutiens; (f) Nomada fabriciana, lurking outside the nest of Andrena bicolor. All photos: Entomologie/Botanik, ETH Zürich/Albert Krebs.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
At least one larval instar in each of the species shown is armed with sickle-shaped mandibles (indicated by white arrows) used for killing its host. Each of these species represents an independent origin of brood parasitism in bees. (a) Third larval instar of the megachiline bee Coelioxys chichimeca (photo Steve Thurston [38], courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History); (b) head of first larval instar of the melectine bee Xeromelecta californica (photo Jerome G. Rozen [39], courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History); (c) head of fifth larval instar of the anthidiine bee Stelis ater (photo Margaret A. Rozen [40], courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History); (d) fifth larval instar of Stelis ater (right) attacking the fourth instar larva of its osmiine host, Osmia chalybea (photo Jerome G. Rozen and H. Glenn Hall [40], courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History).
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