Photos of bees made using the team's imaging system. Credit: Silas Bossert lab/WSU
Phys.org has a story about the evolution of bees. A study in the journal Current Biology shows that bees are tens of years older than previously thought. The researchers looked at DNA from more than 200 species combined that with traits from 185 different bee fossils to develop an evolutionary history and genealogical models for historical bee distribution.
In what may be the broadest genomic study of bees to date, they analyzed hundreds to thousands of genes at a time to make sure that the relationships they inferred were correct.
"This is the first time we have broad genome-scale data for all seven bee families," said co-author Elizabeth Murray, a WSU assistant professor of entomology.
Previous research established that the first bees likely evolved from wasps, transitioning from predators to collectors of nectar and pollen. This study shows they arose in arid regions of western Gondwana during the early Cretaceous period.
"For the first time, we have statistical evidence that bees originated on Gondwana," Bossert said. "We now know that bees are originally southern hemisphere insects."
