Eduardo Almeida

University of São Paulo | USP · Department of Biology

The shift to a pollen diet and the evolution of more highly organized societies, i.e., eusocial, were key milestones in bee diversification over their evolutionary history, culminating in a high dependence on feeding broods with a large variety of floral resources. Here, we hypothesized that obligatory eusocial bees have a wider diet diversity than...

Fernando A. Silveira had the unique combination of being a sagacious scientist and a remarkable human being. Throughout his career, he made significant contributions to understanding bee diversity and keenly spread this scientific information to the academic community at large and beyond the university walls. His rich character, warm heart, strong...

The genus Actenosigynes includes two species, A. fulvoniger (Michener, 1989) and A. mantiqueirensis Silveira, 2009, both oligolectic on flowers of Blumenbachia (Loasaceae) in southern Brazil. We describe a third species, Actenosigynes silveirai Siriani-Oliveira, sp. n., and provide additional evidence to the suspected narrow host-plant specificity...

Esta segunda edição segue a mesma linha da primeira, dando base para o incremento do conhecimento científico relativo à entomologia brasileira nos seus mais diversos aspectos, com informações gerais sobre morfologia, biologia, classificações, relações filogenéticas, importância agrícola, médica, veterinária, métodos de coletas e chaves de identific...

Abstract: Competition is an important biological filter that can define crucial features of species’ natural history, like survival and reproduction success. We evaluated in the Brazilian tropical savanna whether two sympatric and congenereric species, Qualea multiflora Mart. and Q. parviflora Mart. (Vochysiaceae), compete for pollinator services,...

Bees are the most significant pollinators of flowering plants. This partnership began ca. 120 million years ago, but the uncertainty of how and when bees spread across the planet has greatly obscured investigations of this key mutualism. We present a novel analysis of bee biogeography using extensive new genomic and fossil data to demonstrate that...

Long-horned bees (Apidae, Eucerini) are found in different biomes worldwide and include some important crop pollinators. In the Western Hemisphere, Eucerini received extensive taxonomic study during the twentieth century, resulting in several revisions of its genera. In contrast, progress on eucerine phylogenetic research and the genus-level classi...

All Epiponini wasps are polygynic, with multiple queens alternating over the colony cycle. There are several potential queens in the early stages of this cycle, but as it progresses, the number of queens is reduced. Because most individuals remain reproductively totipotent, there is great potential for conflicts over reproduction. Workers could hav...

The diversity of the Elampini cuckoo wasps in northeastern Brazil is reviewed. Three new species are described: Hedychrum oxente Lucena & Zanella sp. nov., Holopyga lunae Lucena sp. nov., and Muesebeckidium clemensi Lucena & Zanella sp. nov. A lectotype is designated for Holopyga piliventris Ducke, 1907 and herein illustrated. Elampus aequinoctiali...

As abelhas-sem-ferrão (tribo Meliponini) estão entre os polinizadores mais comuns nas regiões tropicais do mundo, compreendendo cerca de 550 espécies. Essas abelhas têm grande importância na polinização de plantas nativas e cultivos, além de possuírem associações históricas com sociedades humanas, adquirindo relevância cultural e econômica (Grüter,...

speciesLink is a large-scale biodiversity information portal that exists thanks to a broad collaborative network of people and institutions. CRIA's involvement with the scientific community of Brazil and other countries is responsible for the significant results achieved, currently reaching more than 15 million primary biodiversity data records, 95...

Aim An antitropical pattern is characterized by the occurrence of closely related taxa south and north of the tropics but absent or uncommonly represented closer to the equator, in contrast to most taxa, which tend to have their highest diversity in the tropical regions. We investigate the antitropical distribution of eucerine bees with the aim of...

We integrated phylogenetic, biogeographic and palaeontological data to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the cuckoo wasps. We propose a phylogenetic hypothesis based on a comprehensive morphological study resulting in 300 characters coded for both living and extinct species. Phylogenetic relationships and divergence time estimation were simul...

The mining bees (Andrenidae) are a major bee family of over 3000 described species with a nearly global distribution. They are a particularly significant component of northern temperate ecosystems and are critical pollinators in natural and agricultural settings. Despite their ecological and evolutionary significance, our knowledge of the evolution...

Ribosomal DNA (rDNA) loci are essential for cellular metabolism due to their participation in ribosome biogenesis. Although these genes have been widely cytogenetically mapped, the evolutionary mechanisms behind its variability in number and chromosomal location remain elusive, even in well‐known biological groups, such as ants, bees, and wasps (In...

The worldwide distributed genus Oecetis currently contains around 550 valid species, 73 of them recorded in the Neotropical region. The genus is characterized by adults bearing long and stout maxillary palps and an unbranched M-vein on forewings. More than 50% of the Neotropical species of Oecetis was described in the past 20 years. However, those...

Corbiculate bees comprise a distinctive radiation of animals including many familiar species, such as honey bees and bumble bees. The group exhibits a broad variety of morphologies and behaviors, including solitary, social, and cleptoparasitic lifestyles. Since corbiculate bees play a critical role for the interpretation of eusocial behaviors, unde...

We integrated phylogenetic, biogeographic and palaeontological data to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the cuckoo wasps. We propose a phylogenetic hypothesis based on a comprehensive morphological study resulting in 300 characters coded for both living and extinct species. Phylogenetic relationships and divergence time estimation were simul...

Many of the phenotypic manifestations present in social insects are related to the development of exocrine glands, well represented by the nest-building behaviors. Among bees, four tribes compose the corbiculate bees, including both solitary and eusocial species: Apini, Bombini, Euglossini and Meliponini, which use wax as an endogenous product to c...

The diversity of two subfamilies of cuckoo wasps in northeastern Brazil is reviewed. Four new species are described and illustrated: Amisega boyi Lucena, sp. nov., A. sertaneja Lucena, sp. nov., and Duckeia dudui Lucena, sp. nov. (Amiseginae), and Cleptidea nordestina Lucena, sp. nov. (Cleptinae). These new species of Amisega and Duckeia represent...

Coniceromyia is a genus of 100 species of phorid flies mostly distributed in the Neotropical region. The genus is distinguishable based on several male-exclusive features in different parts of the body, many of which are unique among the Phoridae. In addition, many species of Coniceromyia have nearly identical morphology of their male copulatory ap...

Neotropical swarm‐founding wasps are divided into 19 genera in the tribe Epiponini (Vespidae, Polistinae). They display extensive variation in several colony‐level traits that make them an attractive model system for reconstructing the evolution of social phenotypes, including caste dimorphism and nest architecture. Epiponini has been upheld as a s...

Incongruence among phylogenetic results has become a common occurrence in analyses of genome-scale data sets. Incongruence originates from uncertainty in underlying evolutionary processes (e.g. incomplete lineage sorting) and from difficulties in determining the best analytical approaches for each situation. To overcome these difficulties, more stu...

The present catalogue lists the insect types (Hexapoda) deposited at Coleção Entomológica “Prof. J.M.F.Camargo” (RPSP), Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. This collection is known as one of the most significant depositories of stingless bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini) for the Brazilian and Neotropical faunas, largely because...

It is widely recognized that different regions of a genome often have different evolutionary histories and that ignoring this variation when estimating phylogenies can be misleading. However, the extent to which this is also true for morphological data is still largely unknown. Discordance among morphological traits might plausibly arise due to eit...

The population dynamics of freshwater organisms are expected to be related to the connectivity among comparable streams, ponds, or rivers in a patchy habitat. Here, we investigated the population dynamics of the giant water bug, Belostoma angustum Lauck 1964 (Hemiptera: Belostomatidae), in a fine-scale spatial sampling, and evaluated which gene flo...

Sexual size dimorphism and evolutionary allometry in giant water bugs: implications to the paternal care behavior The size of morphological traits varies markedly both within and among species, a large part of this variation results from the allometric relationship linking trait size and body size. In general, the allometry allows assessing the sca...

A filogeografia estuda os princípios e processos que governam a distribuição geográfica de linhagens genealógicas (Avise, 1998). A filogeografia comparativa, por sua vez, estuda os padrões filogeográficos de várias espécies codistribuídas ou espécies proximamente relacionadas, mas alopátricas (Arbeláez-Cortés, 2012). É a busca de congruência em pad...

The expansion of monocultures and the overuse of agrochemicals have resulted in the loss of beneficial insects and disruption of ecosystem services such as pollination and biological control in agricultural landscapes. Bees, wasps and flower flies were our model groups to investigate how landscape structure attributes affect alpha and beta diversit...

Context Bees are the most important pollinators of crops worldwide. For most bees, patches of semi-natural habitat within or adjacent to crops can provide important nesting and food resources. Despite this, land cover change is rapidly reducing the abundance of semi-natural habitat within agroecological landscapes, with potentially negative consequ...

The pharyngeal plate is a morphological complex with extensive anatomical variation among bees and, therefore, potential as a source of phylogenetic information. The pharyngeal plate of bees is divided into four morphologically distinct regions: sitophore, hypopharyngeal lobe, pharyngeal rods, and median oral plate. In this work we illustrate and d...

The main sources of food for stingless bees are the nectar and pollen harvested from flowers, whereas one important kind of nesting material (i.e. wax) is produced by their own abdominal glands. Stingless bees can, nonetheless, obtain alternative resources of food and wax from exudates released by sap-sucking insects as honeydew and waxy cover, res...

Phylogenetic studies addressing relationships among chrysidid wasps have been limited. There are no hypotheses proposed for the Neotropical lineages of Chrysidini other than the classic cladogram published in the 1990s by Kimsey and Bohart. Herein we present a cladistic analysis based on 64 morphological characters coded for 54 species of Chrysidin...

Supporting Information (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2Fzsc.12333&file=zsc12333-sup-0001-SupInfo.pdf) of Zoologica Scripta paper "The diversification of neopasiphaeine bees during the Cenozoic (Hymenoptera: Colletidae)" Full paper can be accessed thought the URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.111...

The biogeography of colletid bees as a whole can be explained by several South American‐Australian trans‐Antarctic interchanges. Within Colletidae, neopasiphaeine bees form a large group that has not been adequately studied, even though they are interesting both from the biogeographical viewpoint for fitting well the austral Gondwanan track and for...

Undoubtedly bees are some of the most extensively researched group organisms on Earth, and this might have to do with a long history of coexistence between these insects and humans. Honey bees and other social bees have been exploited for food since prehistory, and their charms as highly elaborated societies have puzzled curious individuals, from n...

Two increasingly popular approaches to reconstruct the Tree of Life involve whole transcriptome sequencing and the target capture of ultraconserved elements (UCEs). Both methods can be used to generate large, multigene datasets for analysis of phylogenetic relationships in non-model organisms. While targeted exon sequencing across divergent lineage...

Nine new species of the collembolan genus Salina MacGillivray from South America are described and illustrated. Two Neotropical species were recorded for the first time from Brazil: S. dedoris Mari-Mutt and S. tristani Denis. Salina was previously known to occur in three Brazilian states, and this is now updated to include 19 states with 12 recorde...

https://jornal.usp.br/universidade/em-artigo-na-science-pesquisadores-brasileiros-saem-em-defesa-da-biodiversidade/

To address the rapid and massive loss of biodiversity worldwide, scientific research must inform agile decision-making. The political leaders of Brazil, the country with the planet’s greatest biological wealth (1), continue to undermine this goal. In 2001, citing the laudable objective of preventing biopiracy, the government created the Genetic Her...

We investigated the population dynamics of the giant water bug, Belostoma angustum, across highlands in the Pampas of southern Brazil. We evaluated genetic and morphological variation, as well as the demographic history of 18 populations. Genetic variation was assessed from mitochondrial and nuclear markers. The morphological variation was estimate...

The differentiation of workers into morphological castes represents an important evolutionary innovation that is thought to improve division of labor in insect societies. Given the potential benefits of task-related worker differentiation, it is puzzling that physical worker castes, such as soldiers, are extremely rare in social bees and absent in...

The high adaptive success of parasitic Hymenoptera might be related to the use of different oviposition sites, allowing niche partitioning among co-occurring species resulting in life history specialization and diversification. In this scenario, evolutionary changes in life history and resources for oviposition can be associated with changes in ovi...

Despite the (TTAGG)n telomeric repeat supposed being the ancestral DNA motif of telomeres in insects, it was repeatedly lost within some insect orders. Notably, parasitoid hymenopterans and the social wasp Metapolybia decorata (Gribodo) lack the (TTAGG)n sequence, but in other representatives of Hymenoptera, this motif was noticed, such as differen...

Tetraglossula ranges from southern Pará state, Brazil, through central South American (occurring in different biomes: Cerrado savanna, Chaco, and Atlantic forest) southward to the Pampa reaching the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hitherto, four species have been recognized in Tetraglossula Ogloblin, 1948: T. anthracina (Michener, 1989); T. bi...

The species of the chrysidid genus Ipsiura are reviewed with emphasis on the taxa occurring in Brazil. In the present study 34 Ipsiura species are recognized, diagnosed, and illustrated. Two new species are described here: Ipsiura bohartiana Lucena sp. nov. and I. duckeana Lucena sp. nov., and two others are transferred from Neochrysis to Ipsiura:...

Complex internal skeletal structures, despite their potential as rich sources of phylogenetic information, are still poorly described and used in comparative studies of insects in general, and bees in particular. In this study we present the results of a comprehensive investigation of the internal structures of the mesosoma of bees (e.g. prosternum...

A detailed protocol for chemical clearing of bee specimens is presented. Dry specimens as well as those preserved in liquid media can be cleared using this protocol. The procedure consists of a combined use of alkaline solution (KOH or NaOH) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), followed by the boiling of the cleared specimens in 60–70% EtOH. Clearing is p...

Neopasiphaeine bees (Apoidea: Colletidae) are known for their Amphinotic distribution in the Australian and Neotropical regions. Affinities between colletid taxa in Australia and South America have been speculated for decades, and have been confirmed by recent phylogenetic hypotheses that indicate a biogeographic scenario compatible with a trans-An...

Phylogenetic relationships of corbiculate bees have been a well-known focus of controversies over the past 30years. The majority of the morphological datasets support the monophyly of Apina+Meliponina, whereas molecular datasets recover Meliponina as sister to Bombina. This issue is especially critical to the proper understanding of the evolution o...

Neopasiphaeinae bees (Apoidea: Colletidae) are well known for their Amphinotic distribution in the Australian and Neotropical regions. Affinities between colletid taxa in Australia and South America have been speculated for decades, and have been confirmed by recent phylogenetic hypotheses that indicate a biogeographic scenario compatible with a tr...

Neopasiphaeinae bees (Apoidea: Colletidae) are well known for their Amphinotic distribution in the Australian and Neotropical regions. Affinities between colletid taxa in Australia and South America have been speculated for decades, and have been confirmed by recent phylogenetic hypotheses that indicate a biogeographic scenario compatible with a tr...

House flies are one of the best known groups of flies and comprise about 5,000 species worldwide. Despite over a century of intensive taxonomic research on these flies, classification of the Muscidae is still poorly resolved. Here we brought together the most diverse molecular dataset ever examined for the Muscidae, with 142 species in 67 genera re...

Phylogenetic hypotheses and estimates of divergence times have already been used to investigate the evolution of social behavior in all lineages of bees. The interpretation of the number of origins of eusocial behavior and the timing of these events depends on reliable phylogenetic hypotheses for the clades in which these lineages are nested. Three...

h D epartement Syst ematique et Evolution, Mus eum national d'Histoire naturelle, CP 51, 55 rue Buffon, 75231, Paris, France; i National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, No. 2, Houwan Road, Checheng, Pingtung, 944, Taiwan; j Department of Science and Education, The Field Museum, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, 60605, USA; k D eparte...

Our understanding of bee phylogeny has improved over the past fifteen years as a result of new data, primarily nucleotide sequence data, and new methods, primarily model-based methods of phylogeny reconstruction. Phylogenetic studies based on single or, more commonly, multilocus data sets have helped resolve the placement of bees within the superfa...

Aim The evolutionary history of bees is presumed to extend back in time to the Early Cretaceous. Among all major clades of bees, Colletidae has been a prime example of an ancient group whose Gondwanan origin probably precedes the complete break‐up of Africa, Antarctica, Australia and South America, because modern lineages of this family occur prima...

Universities are crucial for holding specimen collections in megabiodiverse, developing regions such as Brazil (see Nature 471, 164–165; 2011). Only local institutions can gather information with the necessary resolution to answer biological questions at a regional scale. But such collections suffer from serious funding shortages, mostly because th...

A phylogenetic analysis of the intrageneric relationships within the bee genus Colletes using a combined data set of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 (COI) and 28S sequences is presented and its implications for historical biogeography are investigated. We analyzed 91 out of 469 described Colletes species (19.4%) from the entire range of dist...

A revision and phylogenetic analysis of the species of Exomalopsis (Phanomalopsis) are presented. E. dimi-nuta Silveira is removed from this subgenus. This species and E. dubia, described here as new, may be part of E. (Diomalopsis); however, they are left as incertae sedis in Exomalopsis until their males are discovered. Twelve species are recogni...

Colletidae comprise approximately 2500 species of bees primarily distributed in the southern continents (only two colletid genera are widely distributed: Colletes and Hylaeus). Previously published studies have failed to resolve phylogenetic relationships on a worldwide basis and this has been a major barrier to the progress of research regarding s...

Colletid bees are widely distributed, but most of their diversity is found in southern continents, particularly Australia and South America. A major obstacle for the classification of Colletidae has been the lack of a well-resolved phylogenetic hypothesis encompassing representatives from all the main lineages of this family. A molecular phylogenet...

Colletid bees are widely distributed, but most of their diversity is found in southern continents, particularly Australia and South America. A major obstacle for the classification of Colletidae has been the lack of a well-resolved phylogenetic hypothesis encompassing representatives from all the main lineages of this family. A molecular phylogenet...

Colletidae are unique among bees for certain aspects of their nesting biology. In this review, attributes of colletid nesting are evaluated and discussed in light of a novel phylogenetic hypothesis for the family. Some predictions made about evolution of certain traits, such as the cocoon-spinning behavior of Diphaglossinae, are confronted with phy...

The Brazilian species of the bee genus Pseudaugochlora are revised. Pseudaugochlora was erected by Michener to include species previously considered in Pseudaugochloropsis. Among the species previously known in the genus, only two — P. graminea (Fabricius 1804) and P. pandora (Smith 1853) — were known to occur in Brazil. In this study, five new spe...

The Brazilian species of the bee genus Pseudaugochlora are revised. Pseudaugochlora was erected by Michener to include species previously considered in Pseudaugochloropsis. Among the species previously known in the genus, only two — P. graminea (Fabricius 1804) and P. pandora (Smith 1853) — were known to occur in Brazil. In this study, five new spe...

We present the results of a combined analysis of 248 morphological characters and sequences from 3 genes for 29 species of Xeromelissinae and 7 outgroup taxa including representatives of the colletid subfamilies Colletinae, Euryglossinae, Hylaeinae, Paracolletinae, and Scrapterinae. The paracolletine genus Trichocolletes was used to root the tree....

FIGURE 6. Terminalia of male of Andrenopsis michenerianus Almeida, sp. n. (a) Dorsal view of genitalia; (b) ventral view of genitalia; (c) ventral view of S 7; (d) dorsal view of S 8.

FIGURE 1. Summary of phylogenetic relationships within Paracolletinae obtained by Almeida and Danforth (in press). Placement of the genus Paracolletes is uncertain, hence it is omitted (see Almeida & Danforth, in press for discussion). Genera indicated with a star render Leioproctus s. l. (sensu e. g., Michener, 2007) paraphyletic. Results based on...

FIGURES 2 – 5. Male of Andrenopsis michenerianus Almeida, sp. n. (2) Dorsal aspect; (3) lateral aspect; (4) hind tarsus; (5) face.

FIGURES 7 – 11. Female of Andrenopsis michenerianus Almeida, sp. n. (7) Lateral habitus; (8) dorsal habitus; (9) face; (10) pygidial plate; (11) basitibial plate.

FIGURES 12 – 13. Female of Andrenopsis michenerianus Almeida, sp. n. (12) Wings; (13) lateral view of tarsal claw.

Euglossa decorata Smith is currently regarded as endemic to the Amazon Basin. In the present study, a report is discussed of the presence of E. decorata in Uberlândia municipality, state of Minas Gerais, which is in the "Cerrado" or Brazilian savanna, and which extends the bee's known geographic range over 2,000 km southwards. E. decorata either fa...

Em dezembro de 1997 o Projeto de Conservação e de utilização Sustentável da Diversidade Biológica Brasileira – Probio lançou o Edital 01/1997 visando selecionar propostas que abordassem o tema “Fragmentação de Ecossistemas Naturais” e que resultassem em recomendações de políticas públicas para mitigar os efeitos da perda da biodiversidade causada p...