Phylogenetic Analysis of the Subfamily Halictinae (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) with an analysis of Social Evolution

这个项目旨在重建一个庞大的、多样化的、世界性的蜜蜂亚科——Halictinae的可能的进化关系（系统发育）。这个亚家族通常被称为“汗蜂”，因为它们对人类的汗水有吸引力。在世界上大多数地区，Halictid蜜蜂约占蜜蜂动物群的20%，在北半球最常见。在美国有多达320种，其中一些是本地植物的重要传粉者。Halictid蜂为研究社会进化提供了一个理想的系统，因为物种从独居到高度群居。高度社会化的形式与蜜蜂的社会性相似，在形态上有明显的蜂王和工蜂等级，大部分繁殖由蜂王进行，工蜂帮助蜂王觅食和保卫巢穴。这样的社会是如何进化的是进化生物学中的一个主要问题，只有少数生物群体提供了对这一过程的见解。该项目将结合形态学和DNA序列数据来推断属与种之间的历史关系。系统发育树将被用来了解这些蜜蜂的社会行为是如何随着时间的推移而进化的。系统发育分析还将提供一种方法来推断从独居行为到高度社会化行为的途径，并可用于确定社会谱系产生独居后代的情况。

DEB 9815236DanforthCornell UniversityThis project seeks to reconstruct the likely evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) for a large, diverse, cosmopolitan subfamily of bees called the Halictinae. This subfamily is commonly referred to as the "sweat bees" because of their attraction to human sweat. Halictid bees comprise roughly 20% of the bee fauna in most regions of the world, and are most common in the northern Hemisphere. In the US there are as many as 320 species and some are important pollinators of native plants. Halictid bees provide an ideal system for studying social evolution because species range from solitary to highly social. The highly social forms are similar to honey bees in sociality in that there are morphologically distinct queen and worker castes, most of the reproduction is carried out by the queen, and workers aid the queen in foraging and nest defense. How such societies evolve is a major question in evolutionary biology and only a few groups of organisms provide insights into this process. The project will use a combination of morphological and DNA sequence data to infer the historical relationships among genera and among species. The phylogenetic trees will then be used to understand how the social behavior of these bees has evolved through time. Phylogenetic analysis will also provide a method for inferring the pathway taken from solitary to highly social behavior, and can be used to identify cases in which social lineages have given rise to solitary descendants.