Feeding Habits and Behavior of a Bee Killer: Hololepta reichii (Coleoptera, Histeridae)
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SCIENTIFIC NOTE
Feeding Habits and Behavior of a Bee Killer: Hololepta reichii (Coleoptera, Histeridae) AF CARVALHO1 , FWT LEIVAS2 , TB SOUZA1 1
Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo, Brasil Depto de Biodiversidade, Univ Federal do Paraná, Palotina, Paraná, Brasil
2
Keywords Apis mellifera, Atlantic forest, Clown beetles, Melittophile beetles, Stingless bees Correspondence AF Carvalho, Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo, Brasil; [email protected] Edited by Fábio S Nascimento – FFCLRP/USP Received 23 April 2020 and accepted 16 September 2020 * Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil 2020
Abstract Hololepta (Leionota) reichii Marseul is a widespread but rarely encountered natural enemy of social bees, so we evaluated feeding habits and behavior of such a clown beetle regarding bees, beehive by-products, and other sources of food under a monitored environment. The experiments revealed that H. reichii preferentially predates larvae and pupae of social bees extracted from brood cells, but also feeds on dead adult stingless bees and on larvae and pupae inside cells. This note reports the first finding of clown beetles (Coleoptera, Histeridae) in a hive aggregation of stingless and honey bees in natural conditions and expands the known distribution of the species to the state of Espírito Santo, the second record in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Predators of social insects are agents responsible for the decline of bees worldwide since these organisms may lead colonies to the collapse (Eyer et al 2009), a serious threat to the conservation of pollinators around the globe. In this study, we report the first finding of Hololepta (Leionota) reichii Marseul (Coleoptera, Histeridae: Hololeptini) to the state of Espírito Santo and present novel data on food habits and behavior of such a clown beetle under monitored conditions. Hololepta reichii is widely distributed in the Americas, ranging from Mexico to Argentina (Mazur 2011). However, in Brazil, the records are limited to the states of Amazonas, Paraná, Goiás, and Mato Grosso (Coletto-Silva & Freire 2006, Gonçalves & Leivas 2017, Silva-Neto et al 2019, Péche et al 2019, respectively); probably, there are many undetermined specimens in collections. Despite the wide distribution, the species is rarely sampled in inventory studies and can be differentiated from other Hololepta (Leionota) species by (i) the frontal stria transverse and interrupted in the middle; (ii) pronotum sides with punctual depressions (like holes, usually 1–4); and (iii) 2nd dorsal stria complete. Externally, the male of H. reichii can be defined by the presence of fovea (holes) in the anterior angles of the pronotum, whereas in the female
there is no fovea (sometimes the female presents only a superficial depression). An identification key to the species of Hololepta, which includes H. reichii, can be accessed in Degallier et al (2010). Although species of Hololepta typically live under bark decaying trunks, H. reichii is usually collected wi
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