Instituto Tecnolgico ValeDesenvolvimento Sustentvel; R. Boaventura da Silva 955; 66055 090; Bel Par Brazil.
Instituto Tecnolgico ValeDesenvolvimento Sustentvel; R. Boaventura da Silva 955; 66055 090; Bel Par Brazil; Ps-Graduao em Biologia (Zoologia); PPGCB; Departamento de Sistemtica e Ecologia; Universidade Federal da Paraba (UFPB); 58059-900; Joo Pessoa; PB; Brazil; Museu Paraense Emlio Goeldi; MPEG; Ps-graduao em Biodiversidade e Evolu Av. Magalhes Barata; 376; 66040.170; Bel Par Brazil.
Zootaxa. 2024 Jan 25;5404(1):124-133. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5404.1.9.
Identifying and classifying species of stingless Neotropical bees is not a trivial task and requires the help of taxonomists and substantial study and training time. Also, there is a lack of taxonomically useful characters to differentiate among the megadiverse Neotropical group of stingless bees, and to recognize variation. Based on that, we have been testing alternatives to a character-based, efficient taxonomic determination of stingless bees, and herein we performed exploratory analyses of wing shape variation using geometric morphometrics. Thus, we built a data set of photographs of the right anterior wing of 1628 individuals belonging to 11 species in the genus Melipona (Illiger 1806) taken from collection material deposited in entomological collections. We then conducted a Procrustes analysis, followed by a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and by a Canonical Variable Analyses (CVA). The two first principal components of the PCA accounted for 68% of the variation of the wing shape, and the ordination displayed by the first component separated species of the subgenus Melikerria from the others. In the CVA, the first two canonical axes explained 88% of the wing shape variation found among species, and Melikerria appears as a separate group, apart from the other subgenera in the first canonical axis. Along the second axis species belonging to Eomelipona and Michmelia, and among the Michmelia species, and its species group fuliginosa formed well-separated clusters. The wing shape variation of Melipona supports the recognition of subgenera as currently proposed for Melipona.
鉴定和分类新热带无刺蜜蜂物种并不是一项简单的任务，需要分类学家的帮助和大量的研究和培训时间。此外，在新热带地区多样化的无刺蜜蜂群体中，缺乏具有分类学意义的特征来区分它们，也无法识别其变异。基于这一点，我们一直在测试替代基于特征的无刺蜜蜂高效分类学方法，在此，我们使用几何形态测量学对翅膀形状变化进行了探索性分析。因此，我们构建了一个数据集，其中包含 11 个 Melipona 属（Illiger 1806）物种的 1628 只个体的右前翅的照片，这些个体来自昆虫收藏中的收藏材料。然后，我们进行了 Procrustes 分析，随后进行了主成分分析（PCA）和典范变量分析（CVA）。PCA 的前两个主成分解释了翅膀形状变化的 68%，而第一成分的排序将 Melikerria 亚属的物种与其他物种分开。在 CVA 中，前两个典范轴解释了物种之间发现的翅膀形状变化的 88%，而 Melikerria 作为一个单独的群体，与其他亚属在第一典范轴上分开。沿着第二轴，属于 Eomelipona 和 Michmelia 的物种，以及 Michmelia 物种及其 fuliginosa 物种组形成了很好分离的集群。Melipona 的翅膀形状变化支持当前对 Melipona 提出的亚属的认可。
