Resin collection in a tropical stingless bee community

The eusocial stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are important pollinators in tropical ecosystems. Besides collecting pollen and nectar they also collect large amounts of plant resins. Bees use resin for nest construction, nest maintenance, and nest defense; but how these factors influence the resin collecting activity in bee colonies has received little attention. It is also unknown whether bees are specialized on certain resin sources. We found that colonies of two stingless bee species (Tetragonilla collina and Tetragonula melanocephala) in Borneo strongly increase the intensity of resin collection when their colony is attacked by ants, indicating that defense against predators is an important factor in resin use of stingless bees. By contrast, artificial nest damage poorly influenced resin intake. All bee species collected resin from several tree species, particularly from trees of the dipterocarp family. Analysis of network-level specialization suggests that bee species are highly generalized in their resin collecting behavior. Consequently,
resin tree diversity may be important for stingless bees in order to provide resin of complementary physiological and chemical properties. However, it remains to be investigated whether the diversity of resins collected is of true importance to the bees or just reflects an opportunistic choice of resin sources.

Talk at the Joint meeting of Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) & Society for Tropical Ecology (GTÖ)