PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE A sting affair: A global quantitative exploration of bee, wasp and ant hosts of velvet ants 1 2 Federico RonchettiID *, Carlo Polidori 1 Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, University of Wuerzburg, WuÈrzburg, Germany, 2 Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales (ICAM), Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain *
[email protected] Abstract The vast majority of species of velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Aculeata: Mutillidae) are ectopar- a1111111111 asitoids of immature stages of other aculeate Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants). Due to a1111111111 their cryptic, furtive behaviour at the host nesting sites, however, even basic information on a1111111111 their biology, like host use diversity, is still unknown for entire subfamilies, and the known a1111111111 information, scattered in over two centuries of published studies, is potentially hiding tenden- a1111111111 cies to host specialization across velvet ant lineages. In this review, based on 305 host asso- ciations spanning 132 species in 49 genera and 10 main lineages (tribes/subfamilies), we explored patterns of host use in velvet ants. Overall, 15 families and 29 subfamilies of Acu- leata are listed as hosts of mutillids, with a strong predominance of Apoidea (bees and apoid OPEN ACCESS wasps: 19 subfamilies and 82.3% of host records). A series of bipartite networks, multivari- Citation: Ronchetti F, Polidori C (2020) A sting ate analyses and calculations of different indices suggested possible patterns of specializa- affair: A global quantitative exploration of bee, wasp tion. Host taxonomic spectrum (number of subfamilies) of velvet ants was very variable and and ant hosts of velvet ants. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0238888.