<I>Centris</I> and <I>Epicharis</I>
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
doi:10.1111/evo.12689
Gain and loss of specialization in two oil-bee lineages, Centris and Epicharis (Apidae)
Aline C. Martins,1,2 GabrielA.R.Melo,2 and Susanne S. Renner1,3 1Department of Biology, University of Munich, 80638, Munich, Germany 2Department of Zoology, Federal University of Parana,´ PB 19020, Curitiba, PR 81531-980, Brazil 3E-mail: [email protected]
Received October 17, 2014 Accepted May 21, 2015
It is plausible that specialized ecological interactions constrain geographic ranges. We address this question in neotropical bees, Centris and Epicharis, that collect oils from flowers of Calceolariaceae, Iridaceae, Krameriaceae, Malpighiaceae, Plantaginaceae, or Solanaceae, with different species exploiting between one and five of these families, which either have epithelial oil glands or hair fields. We plotted the level of oil-host specialization on a clock-dated phylogeny for 22 of the 35 species of Epicharis and 72 of the 230 species of Centris (genera that are not sister genera) and calculated geographic ranges (km2) for 23 bee species based on collection data from museum specimens. Of the oil-offering plants, the Malpighiaceae date to the Upper Cretaceous, whereas the other five families are progressively younger. The stem and crown groups of the two bee genera date to the Cretaceous, Eocene, and Oligocene. Shifts between oil hosts from different families are common in Centris, but absent in Epicharis, and the direction is from flowers with epithelial oil glands to flowers with oil hairs, canalized by bees’ oil-collecting apparatuses, suitable for piercing epithelia or mopping oil from hair fields. With the current data, a link between host specialization and geographic range size could not be detected.
KEY WORDS: Bees, geographic ranges, molecular clock dating, oil flowers, phylogenetics, plant–insect interactions.
Individual phytophagous insect species rarely use the full range and fatty oil. The oil is produced by epithelial glands or oil hairs of their food plants, and the relationship between the range sizes found in the flowers of 2000 species in well over 100 genera of insects and their food plants is not a simple linear one (Stewart in 11 families on all continents except Antarctica (Vogel 1974, et al. 2015). Range expansion may be facilitated by temporary 1988; Rasmussen and Olesen 2000; Machado 2004; Renner and escape from natural enemies, by the exploitation of novel food Schaefer 2010). In the New World, the oil bee/oil plant “system” plants that permit a broader set of habitats to be used, or by cli- extends from the southern United States to Patagonia and involves mate change, making changes in distributions difficult to attribute seven plant families and four groups of bees, Centris (Fig. 1A– to particular factors. A testable expectation in this context is that C), Epicharis, Tapinotaspidini, and Tetrapedia (Rasmussen and foraging specialization should limit range expansions and should Olesen 2000; Sigrist and Sazima 2004; Martins et al. 2013). be associated with narrower ranges than occupied by related less Considering that there are only 450 oil-bee species world- specialized species. Bees are phytophagous insects because they wide in few genera and subfamilies and yet 2000 species of plants feed their larvae with the gamete-containing pollen grains of flow- in numerous genera and 11 families with oil-offering flowers, ering plants. Plants have evolved numerous strategies to reduce colonization of new floral oil hosts by bees over evolutionary the proportion of their pollen that ends up in larval guts, includ- time is the expected scenario, and this is supported by molec- ing offering additional or alternative rewards (Simpson and Neff ular clock dated bee and plant phylogenies indicating very few 1981). One such alternative reward is floral oil, which is collected ancient oil-flower lineages and numerous younger ones (Ren- by the females of some 450 species of bees in 18 genera in Ap- ner and Schaefer 2010). Selection by bees on preadapted flowers inae and Melittinae that provision their cells with a mix of pollen that could be “recruited” as new oil sources would have involved