Abstract
Lestrimelitta spp. are stingless bees that steal food and nesting materials from other highly social bees to survive. Though most of their victim species respond, either aggressively or submissively, to cephalic components of Lestrimelitta, little is known about if such response changes at some point during extended periods of exposure. Moreover, potential synergistic effects due to a mixture of victim’s alarm/defense pheromones and Lestrimelitta mandibular pheromones, like in an actual attack, have not been examined so far. In this paper, we investigated the response of two species of non-robber stingless bees, Scaptotrigona mexicana (Guérin) and Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille), to (a) cephalic compounds from crushed heads of nestmates, (b) cephalic compounds of Lestrimelitta niitkib (Ayala), and (c) a mixture of (a) and (b). We found that even though T. angustula did not react to nestmates’ crushed head, its response towards L. niitkib cephalic compounds was stronger and lasted longer than that of S. mexicana. Interestingly, the addition of crushed heads of the non-robber species to L. niitkib crushed heads caused no significant increase in the alarm response of both species. It may be that the absence of an alarm pheromone in T. angustula made this species more receptive to extraneous odors, which is not the case for S. mexicana; however, more species must be studied to elucidate any pattern regarding the absence/presence of alarm pheromones and the corresponding response to intruders’ pheromones.
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the help of Dr. James Nieh, Tyler Jack McCollough, Erik de Jesús Solórzano, Miguel Guzmán, Ricardo Toledo, Julieta Grajales, and Leonardo Daniel Arévalo Monterrubio. This study was possible thanks to the support of SEP-CONACYT agreement no. 128702 “Evolución de la cleptobiosis en Lestrimelitta”, UC-MEXUS project “Olfactory eavesdropping and against a cleptoparasite, Lestrimelitta niitkib” and COCYTECH for the support granted to Dr. Daniel Sánchez through the “Sistema Estatal de Investigadores de Chiapas.”
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Edited by Fábio S Nascimento – FFCLRP/USP
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Campollo-Ovalle, A., Sánchez, D. Temporal Response of Foragers and Guards of Two Stingless Bee Species to Cephalic Compounds of the Robber Bee Lestrimelitta niitkib (Ayala) (Hymenoptera, Apidae). Neotrop Entomol 47, 791–797 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-018-0599-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-018-0599-2