Frequency and behavior of Melipona stingless bees and orchid bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in relation to floral characteristics of vanilla in the Yucatán region of Mexico. [PDF]
PLoS ONEVanilla planifolia is native to the Mexican tropics. Despite its worldwide economic importance as a source of vanilla for flavoring and other uses, almost all vanilla is produced by expensive hand-pollination, and minimal documentation exists for its ...
José Javier G Quezada-Euán +3 more
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The evolution of sexual signaling is linked to odorant receptor tuning in perfume-collecting orchid bees [PDF]
Nature Communications, 2020 Male orchid bees collect scents from the environment to attract females for mating. Here, Brand et al. combine population genomic, perfume chemistry, and functional analyses to show how divergence in odorant receptor genes may be driving reproductive ...
Philipp Brand +6 more
doaj +3 more sources
Age-dependent perfume development in male orchid bees, Euglossa imperialis.
J Exp BiolMale neotropical orchid bees concoct complex perfume blends by collecting exogenous volatiles from various sources, including orchids. These perfumes, stored in specialized hind-leg pouches and released during courtship, serve as inter-sexual signals. It
Henske J, Eltz T.
europepmc +4 more sources
Cuticular Hydrocarbons of Orchid Bees Males: Interspecific and Chemotaxonomy Variation. [PDF]
PLoS ONE, 2015 Recent studies have investigated the composition of compounds that cover the cuticle in social insects, but few studies have focused on solitary bees.
Aline Borba Dos Santos +1 more
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Diversity and distribution of orchid bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Euglossini) in Belize. [PDF]
PeerJ, 2023 Background Orchid bees are abundant and widespread in the Neotropics, where males are important pollinators of orchids they visit to collect fragrant chemicals later used to court females.
O'Neill KM +4 more
europepmc +2 more sources
Anthropogenic effects on the body size of two neotropical orchid bees. [PDF]
BMC Ecol Evol, 2022 To accommodate an ever-increasing human population, agriculture is rapidly intensifying at the expense of natural habitat, with negative and widely reported effects on biodiversity in general and on wild bee abundance and diversity in particular.
Garlin J +5 more
europepmc +2 more sources
Orchid bees enhance seed set production of an understory herb in the Western Brazilian Amazon
Journal of Pollination Ecology, 2023 Bee pollination is an important ecosystem service related to the maintenance of many flowering plants. We evaluated the relationship between orchid bee foraging time and the density of flowering plants and whether visitation varied according to the sex ...
Thaline Brito +4 more
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Revista Chilena de Entomología, 2023 Orchid bees are a conspicuous and ecologically important group of insects, commonly distributed at medium and low altitudes in tropical ecosystems. Therefore, new recordings of orchid bees at higher altitudes are interesting.
Manuela Burbano, Michelle Armijos
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Nest founding by mixed kin groups in communally nesting orchid bees. [PDF]
Biol LettNeotropical orchid bees are the only tribe within the corbiculate bees that does not exhibit obligate eusociality, making them an intriguing study group with regard to the evolution of social behaviour.
Henske J +3 more
europepmc +2 more sources
Evolution of Acquired Perfumes and Endogenous Lipid Secretions in Orchid Bees. [PDF]
J Chem EcolMale orchid bees are unique in the animal kingdom for making perfumes that function as sex pheromone. Males collect volatile chemicals from the environment in the neotropical forests, including floral and non-floral sources, creating complex but species ...
Eltz T, Mende T, Ramírez SR.
europepmc +2 more sources