Halictus scabiosae
| Halictus scabiosae | |
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| Female, museum specimen | |
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H. scabiosae
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| Binomial name | |
| Halictus scabiosae (Rossi, 1790)
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Halictus scabiosae is a species of bee in the family Halictidae, the sweat bees.
Description
The abdomen is long, with yellowish stripes and a double band on tergites two and three. The legs are yellow and antennae are entirely black and curved at the apex. This species looks very similar to a closely related species, Halictus sexcinctus, and thus the two can be easily confused. These two species can be distinguished from one another in that males have longer, reddish antennae, and females lack the basal hair bands on tergites 2-4.[1]
These mining bees nest on the ground in hardened paths. Normally they dig vertical tunnels in the ground, with a circular entrance surrounded by a cone of earth.[2] In most cases a single female of Halictus scabiosae use a single nest, but sometimes they have a primitive social organization, with multiple females reproducing in a common nest.[3] They are used to nest at a particular site in many colonies.
Distribution
This species is present in most of Europe and in North Africa.[4]
References
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Halictus scabiosae. |
Further reading
- Brand, N. and M. Chapuisat. (2013). Born to be bee, fed to be worker? The caste system of a primitively eusocial insect. Frontiers in Zoology 9:35.
- Lienhard, A., et al. (2010). Trade-off between foraging activity and infestation by nest parasites in the primitively eusocial bee Halictus scabiosae. Psyche Article ID 707501.
- Ulrich, Y., et al. (2009). Flexible social organization and high incidence of drifting in the sweat bee, Halictus scabiosae. Molecular Ecology 18(8), 1791-1800.
