This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Vulture bee is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Vulture bee | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
| Species | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
three species; see text |
Vulture bees are a small group of three closely-related American stingless bee species in the genus Trigona which feed on rotting meat rather than pollen or nectar. These are the only known bees which do not rely on plant products for food. This unusual behavior was only discovered in 1982, nearly two centuries after the bees were first classified. The three species in this group are:
Trigona crassipes (Fabricius, 1793)
Trigona hypogea hypogea Silvestri, 1902 and Trigona hypogea robustior Schwarz, 1948 (two subspecies within T. hypogea)
Trigona necrophaga Camargo & Roubik, 1991
References
- Roubik, D.W. 1982. Obligate necrophagy in a social bee. Science 217: 1059-1060.
- Camargo, J.M.F. & Roubik, D.W. 1991. Systematics and bionomics of the apoid obligate necrophages: the Trigona hypogea group. Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society 44: 13-39.
Sources
 |
This Hymenoptera-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 29 February 2008, at 23:20.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Vulture bee".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.