Extreme food-plant specialisation in Megabombus bumblebees as a product of long tongues combined with short nesting seasons

Jiaxing Huang; Jiandong An; Jie Wu; Paul H Williams

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132358

Extreme food-plant specialisation in Megabombus bumblebees as a product of long tongues combined with short nesting seasons

PLoS One. 2015 Aug 12;10(8):e0132358. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132358. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Jiaxing Huang¹, Jiandong An¹, Jie Wu¹, Paul H Williams²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Insect-Pollinator Biology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
² Key Laboratory for Insect-Pollinator Biology of the Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China; Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Megabombus bumblebees have unusually long tongues and are generally more specialised than other bumblebees in their choice of food plants. The phylogeny of Megabombus bumblebees shows that speciation was concentrated in two periods. Speciation in the first period (ca 4.25-1.5 Ma) is associated with the late rise of the Hengduan Mountains at the eastern end of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. Speciation in the second period (1.2-0.3 Ma) is associated with climatic cooling in the northern forests. The most extreme food-specialist species belong to the second period, which may point to climate as a factor in specialisation. These extreme specialist species occur either in the far north (Bombus consobrinus), or at high elevations (Bombus gerstaeckeri), in situations where long tongues coincide with the shortest nesting seasons. Species with the longest tongues but occurring further south (even at high elevations) use a broader range of food plants.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Bees / anatomy & histology
Bees / classification
Bees / genetics*
Electron Transport Complex IV / genetics*
Female
Genetic Speciation*
Genetics, Population
Insect Proteins / genetics*
Male
Nesting Behavior / physiology
Phylogeny*
Plants, Edible / anatomy & histology
Plants, Edible / chemistry
Seasons
Species Specificity
Tongue / anatomy & histology
Tongue / physiology

Substances

Insect Proteins
Electron Transport Complex IV

Grants and funding

This work was supported financially by the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-45), the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest (201203080-4), the SAFEA High-end Foreign Experts Program (GDJ20140326002), the International Exchange and Cooperation Program in Agricultural Science (A6950), the CAAS Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (CAAS-ASTIP-2015-IAR), the CAAS Fundamental Research Funds (201422021). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.