A NUMERICAL TAXONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTIONARY RELATIONSHIPS OF BOMBUS AND PSITHYRUS (APIDAE: HYMENOPTERA)

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The question of whether the evolutionary origin of the parasitic bumble bees (Psithyrus Lep.) was monophyletic or polyphyletic has not been convincingly resolved by conventional systematics. In this study numerical taxonomic (NT) analysis was applied to data on wing venation from a set of 13 species of Psithyrus and 60 species of non-parasitic bumble bees (Bombus Latr.), representing 16 of the subgeneric divisions recognized by Richards. The resultant cluster analysis gave an almost perfect grouping of the constituent Bombus species into their ’correct’ subgenera. This was taken as evidence that the NT procedure had yielded discriminant criteria of evolutionary significance. Since the same criteria also produced a single grouping of the Psithyrus species, the results support a monophyletic origin for Psithyrus.

This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit: