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Host Specialization and Evolution of Cuckoo Behavior in Bees
Policarová, Jana ; Straka, Jakub (advisor) ; Orr, Michael Christopher (referee) ; Litman, Jessica (referee)
Cuckoo bees are nest parasites of solitary and sometimes also social bee species. They do not build their own nests. Nor do they provision their larvae. Instead, they seek out a suitable host nest to lay their eggs in, and their larvae then feed on the host's provisions. In this doctoral thesis, I examined the host specialization of cuckoo bee species. I focused on the evolution of host specialization of cuckoo bees and factors which may limit their host choice - specifically whether and how are cuckoo bees affected by host food specialization. Answering these questions required phylogenetic reconstruction of several cuckoo bee lineages. We produced the first phylogenetic reconstruction of the tribe Sphecodini (Halictidae) and revised the taxonomy of the lineages Neolarrini, Biastini and Townsendiellini (Apidae), merging them into a single tribe Neolarrini. Lastly, we reconstructed the phylogeny of the mainly Palaearctic species of the genus Nomada, on the basis of which we divided the Nomada species into 13 subgenera. The mapping of ancestral character states showed that cuckoo bees of the genus Sphecodes change hosts quite frequently during evolution and are able to switch to phylogenetically distant hosts from different families. It also appears that there is no evolutionary trend towards...
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