Oviposition Process of the Stingless Bees. : XIX. Plebeia (Plebeia) poecilochroa with Highly Integrated Oviposition Process and Small Colony Size (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponinae)

Plebeia (Plebeia) poecilochroa shares, with three other consubgeneric stingless bees, P. droryana, P. emerina and P. remota, the following ethological features : 1-brood cells typically combed, obligatorily batched and synchronously built, 2-food provisioning synchronous, made under high agitation, 3-caste interactions distinctly agonistic but partly ritualized, 4-worker eggs laid on combs long before food provisioning in cells. However, P. poecilochroa differs from P. droryana and P. emerina by absence of involucrum (except in one of the three observed nests in which a simple layer covered the lower half of brood combs) and differs from all three other consubgeners by 1-much smaller colony size, 2-cell operculation remarkably interrupted during the sidework subphase for the prolonged presence of semiopen cells (although this state was to a degree observed in a colony of P. remota). In addition, among so far studied stingless bee taxa this species is unique by sharing well integrated POP and small batch size.