It would appear that cuckoo birds are not the only animate being that has the foul drug abuse of laying its eggs in another animal ’s nest . A freshly pick up species of bee has been honor to invade the nest of other bees while they ’re out collect pollen . It ’s during this opportune time that the female phallus of these newly dubbed “ cuckoo bees ” lay their eggs in the beehive . And because invader egg crosshatch early , the immature bees are able-bodied to get rid of the host bee orchis — leaving the pollen and nectar reserves for themselves .
The discovery of the five new coinage of parasitic bees was made in in the Republic of Cape Verde by Jakub Straka of Charles University in Prague and Michael S. Engel of the University of Kansas . The islands are about 570 kilometers off the west coast of Africa , home to an abundant array of species — many of which have not yet been discovered . And in fact , there have only been 10 scientific expeditions to these island in the preceding 150 age .
The cuckoo bees are zebra - like in appearing , featuring mostly black - and - white-hot radiation diagram . Some of the bees are actually quite tumid , let in C. batelkai which measures 5 mm in length ( compared to the others which lay out around 3.2 to 4.2 mm ) . The scientists think that this is a classic lesson of “ island gigantism ” — an evolutionary effect where a the size of an animal sequestrate on an island environment dramatically increase over sentence proportional to their mainland congenator .
The investigator are now hoping to explore the diversity of the jackass bee ’ hosts and get a better sesne of their evolutionary diversification across the archipelago .
Citation : Straka J , Engel MS ( 2012 ) The apid zany bees of the Cape Verde Islands ( Hymenoptera , Apidae ) . ZooKeys 218 : 77 . doi : 10.3897 / zookeys.218.3683 .
All range via Dr. Jakub Straka & Dr. Michael S. Engel .
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