Bee flowers drive macroevolutionary diversification in long-horned bees

Author:

Dorchin Achik1ORCID,Shafir Anat2ORCID,Neumann Frank H.3ORCID,Langgut Dafna4ORCID,Vereecken Nicolas J.5ORCID,Mayrose Itay2ORCID

Affiliation:

1. The National Natural History Collections, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel

2. School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, The Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

3. Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa

4. Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, and The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University, Israel

5. Agroecology Lab, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium

Abstract

The role of plant–pollinator interactions in the rapid radiation of the angiosperms have long fascinated evolutionary biologists. Studies have brought evidence for pollinator-driven diversification of various plant lineages, particularly plants with specialized flowers and concealed rewards. By contrast, little is known about how this crucial interaction has shaped macroevolutionary patterns of floral visitors. In particular, there is currently no empirical evidence that floral host association has increased diversification in bees, the most prominent group of floral visitors that essentially rely on angiosperm pollen. In this study, we examine how floral host preference influenced diversification in eucerine bees (Apidae, Eucerini), which exhibit large variations in their floral associations. We combine quantitative pollen analyses with a recently proposed phylogenetic hypothesis, and use a state speciation and extinction probabilistic approach. Using this framework, we provide the first evidence that multiple evolutionary transitions from host plants with accessible pollen to restricted pollen from ‘bee-flowers’ have significantly increased the diversification of a bee clade. We suggest that exploiting host plants with restricted pollen has allowed the exploitation of a new ecological niche for eucerine bees and contributed both to their colonization of vast regions of the world and their rapid diversification.

Funder

Tel Aviv University

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine

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