Black mortar bee
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Black mortar bee ( Megachile parietina ) |
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| Megachile parietina | ||||||||||||
| ( Fourcroy , 1785) |
The black mortar bee ( Megachile parietina , syn .: Chalicodoma parietina , Chalicodoma muraria ) is a species from the genus Megachile ( leaf cutter and mortar bees ), bees from the order of the hymenoptera .
features
The black mortar bee is medium-sized (body length 14–18 mm). Females and males are colored very differently .
The males reach a body length of 14 to 17 mm. They have dense brownish-yellow hairs on the chest and front tergites . Only on the back of the abdomen do they have black hairs and thus resemble the black- brush leafcutter bee ( Megachile nigriventris ). The wings of the males are bright.
The name black mortar bee mainly refers to the coloring of the females. Their body color is black, the wings are darkened brown and sometimes shimmering blue in the light. They are densely covered in deep black hair on the top and the belly side, only the middle of the belly brush is reddish in color. The black mortar bee is one of the belly collectors who ingest the pollen with its belly brush. This is densely covered with yellow pollen in collecting females. The females are usually larger than the males at 16 to 18 mm.
Related are Megachile sicula (or Chalicodoma sicula , body length 15–17 mm), which has a red head, red chest and black hairy abdomen , and Megachile pyrenaica (or Chalicodoma pyrenaica , body length 13–16 mm), with the head, Chest and the first three abdominal segments are yellow-brown and the tarsi are red.
distribution
The black mortar bee is widespread throughout the Mediterranean , while it is rarely found north of the Alps . In Germany and Switzerland there are only a few small populations left.
Three populations of the black mortar bee in Germany can be found in Baden-Württemberg , they are in the Hegau , in the upper Neckar valley and in the Nördlinger Ries ; a fourth occurrence exists in Bliesgau . The reasons for the continuous decline in populations are the intensification of agriculture, which resulted in a decline in food crops for the black mortar bees, as well as the reduced supply of natural stone walls and open rocks for their nesting sites. Like all other wild bee species , the black mortar bee is particularly protected by the Federal Species Protection Ordinance (BArtSchV).
Way of life
The black mortar bee lives solitary, i. i.e., it does not form states. Each female builds her own nest out of clay and stones, which is attached to rocks or house walls. This usually contains 5 to 10, in rare cases up to 20 individual cells in which the larvae develop. Each female takes care of her offspring alone and cares for the brood by filling the cell with pollen and nectar before laying eggs. The pollen requirement for each larva is high, so that there must be a large supply of butterflies , especially Esparsette and Horned Clover , to collect pollen. Other sources of pollen are mint such as meadow sage and creeping günsel, as well as the adder head from the predatory leaf family .
The black mortar bee is univoltin , which means that there is only one generation per year. The females live six to eight weeks and fly between late April to late June. In Central Europe, the black mortar bees have a two-year development time, larvae hatching in May / June pupate until September, overwinter as imago in the cocoon and only break through the lining of the nest in the next spring.
Parasites
One of the parasites of the black mortar bee is the red-legged gloomy bee ( Stelis nasuta ), which is one of the cuckoo bees . It lays an average of three to six eggs in the brood cell of the black mortar bee, even before its host has finished her foraging flights and sealed the brood cell. The larvae of the parasite hatch earlier than those of the mortar bee, kill their larvae and feed on the pulp in the cell. The more larvae develop in the brood cell, the smaller they stay; the body length of the females of Stelis nasuta varies between 4 and 10 mm. Due to the dwindling population of the black mortar bee, this breeding parasite, which specializes in its cells, has also become extremely rare in Germany. Further south, it also parasitizes the nests of the species Megachile sicula and Megachile pyrenaica , which are related to the black mortar bee .
The dark two- toothed bees ( Dioxys tridentata ) and Chrysura radians from the golden wasp family are less specialized, as they can attack mason bees from the genus Osmia in addition to the brood cells of the black mortar bee . In southern Central Europe and in southern Europe, the red two- toothed bee ( Dioxys cincta ) also belongs to the parasites of the black mortar bee.
Taxonomy
The black mortar bee was first described as Apis parietina along with many other insects in AF de Fourcroys Entomologia Parisiensis in 1785 . Fourcroy invokes the " Geoffroys method " for these descriptions on the title page of his work and it has often been assumed that the entomologist Geoffroy was the actual first describer and not the chemist Fourcroy. Article 50.1.1 of the ICZN , however, requires that the first descriptor must be clearly identified in the publication. However, no clear distinction is made between the author and the editor or publisher of a work. D'Aguilar and Raimbault therefore suggested in 1990 that "Geoffroy in Fourcroy, 1785" be given as the author's name. However, both Fourcroy and Geoffroy alone and, more rarely, "Geoffroy in Fourcroy" are given for the first description of the black mortar bee.
Since the establishment of the genus Chalicodoma in 1841, the black mortar bee was known under the scientific name Chalicodoma muraria . In many countries, including Germany, the black mortar bee was also called mason bee based on the specific epithet muraria . It was considered a type for the genus Chalicodoma . Until the second half of the 20th century, numerous works on the black mortar bee were published under the name Chalicodoma muraria , including their embryology and behavior.
The German bee specialist Johann Dietrich Alfken determined in 1941 that the scientific name Chalicodoma muraria was based on an error. Apis muraria Retzius 1783, on which the name was based, was the description of a species that was later assigned to Osmia . Alfken therefore suggested using the description in Fourcroy's work and naming the species Chalicodoma parietina . This view later prevailed with other authors. In his Bees of the World published in 2000 , Michener gave up the classification of the non-parasitic bees of the tribe Megachilini into the three genera Megachile , Chalicodoma and Creightonella and put them all together in the genus Megachile . The many morphological transitional forms made a clear delimitation of the genera not possible without precise molecular biological investigations. The black mortar bee has been part of the subgenus Chalicodoma of the genus Megachile since then .
literature
- AF de Fourcroy : Entomologia Parisiensis; sive catalogus insectorum quæ in agro Parisiensi reperiuntur; secundam methodam Geoffrœanam in sectiones, genera & species distributus: cui addita sunt nomina trivialia & fere trecentæ novæ species. Pars prima, pp. 1-231. Parisiis, 1785 (first description).
- Paul Westrich : The wild bees of Baden-Württemberg. Special part, 2nd, improved edition, E. Ulmer, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-800-13317-2 .
- Joachim and Hiriko Haupt: Insects and arachnids in the Mediterranean . Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-440-06030-6 .
- Charles Duncan Michener : Bees of the World. Second Edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-801-88573-6 .
Web links
- Chalicodoma parietina in Fauna Europaea
- Black mortar bee at Wildbienen.info
Individual evidence
- ↑ Also: Geoffroy , 1785 or Geoffroy in Fourcroy , 1785 (see Reference summary for Fourcroy, AF de 1785 at AnimalBase)
- ↑ Heiko Bellmann: bees, wasps, ants. Hymenoptera of Central Europe. 3rd edition, Franckh-Kosmos, 2010, p. 266
- ↑ Saarbrücker Zeitung: Sensational wild bee find in the biosphere reserve
- ↑ Folder (PDF; 1.6 MB) from ARGE Mörtelbiene, State Institute for the Environment, Measurements and Nature Conservation Baden-Württemberg, May 2007
- ↑ Chrysura radians (here under the synonym Chrysis radians in the database of Chrysis.net)
- ^ J. D'Aguilar and F. Raimbault: Notes de bibliographie entomologique. 3. Geoffroy, Fourcroy et l'article 51 du Code de Nomenclature. L'Entomologiste, 46, 1, pp. 37-40, 1990
- ↑ Justus Carrière : The history of the development of the mason bee (Chalicodoma muraria, Fabr.) In the egg . German Academy of Natural Scientists, E. Karras, Halle 1897 ( facsimile at Biodiversity Heritage Library)
- ^ Jean-Henri Fabre : Souvenirs Entomologiques. ( The Tribulations of The Mason English translation of the observations of Chalicodoma muraria )
- ↑ Johann Dietrich, Alfken: What scientific name does the black mortar bee have? Communications of the Munich Entomological Society, 31, pp. 89–92, 1941
- ^ Charles Duncan Michener: Bees of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, p. 552