Scientific note: southernmost record of Mourella caerulea and evidence of old and gradual colonization to the south
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Scientific note
Scientific note: southernmost record of Mourella caerulea and evidence of old and gradual colonization to the south Sofía PALACIOS1 , Estela SANTOS2 , Ivanna TOMASCO1 1
Departamento de Ecología y Evolución, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay Sección Etología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
2
Received 3 June 2020 – Revised 11 September 2020 – Accepted 29 September 2020
Abstract – Little is known about the native bees of Uruguay and no scientific research has been carried out until now. This study aimed to contribute to the knowledge of the native bees, still greatly undermined in Uruguay. To achieve that, workers from the potential species were collected from different locations of the country. Firstly, they were morphologically identified through a taxonomic key and complemented with the Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I sequence, used to infer phylogenetic trees and a haplotype network together with others available in Genbank. Nest characteristics and both morphological and molecular analyses confirm the presence of Mourella caerulea in Uruguay, which constitutes the southernmost formal record of the species. Population analyses suggest that M. caerulea could have colonized the region from the north, slowly and gradually, through the upper regions of the Pampa’s plain. meliponini / chromatic dimorphism / COI / native bee
There are thousands of native bees species in America responsible for maintaining plant diversity of the continent (Michener 2000). The Meliponini tribe (Hymenoptera: Apidae), commonly known as “stingless bees”, are essential pollinators of neotropical flora (Roubik 1992), and have been raised by humans long before the Europeans arrival to America, being Mayas the oldest example (Álvarez 2016). Uruguay has a high diversity of flora for a temperate region dominated by grasslands. It is considered a transitional phytogeographical zone and included in the different biogeographical regions depending on the author (revised by Pérez-Quesada and Brazeiro 2013). Fauna associated with this flora, such as pollinators, has not been detail studied. This study aimed to contribute to the knowledge of the native bees, still greatly undermined in Uruguay. The hypothesis of this study is that the species present in Uruguay is one of those previously reported for the region. Workers were
Corresponding author: S. Palacios, [email protected] Handling editor: Klaus Hartfelder
collected manually between spring and summer of 2018 on several locations of Uruguay (Figure 1a): 2 from Maldonado (nest, − 34.568850, − 55.085439), 1 from Rocha (nest, − 34.3825053, − 54.4933653), 3 from Tacuarembó (nest, − 31.7097802, − 56.0072956) and 3 caught in flight in Lavalleja (− 34.60117, − 55.46377 and − 34.424794, − 55.l0193039). FCEHY 1917, FCE-HY 1918 and FCE-HY 1919 were added to the entomology collection (Facultad de Ciencias, Uruguay). The topography of the nest’s surroundings consists of a highlander landscape with granite rocks,
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