Oviposition Behavior and Related Aspects of the Stingless Bees : XIV. Plebeia (Mourella) caerulea, with Comparative Notes on the Evolution of the Oviposition Patterns (Apidae, Meliponinae)

Plebeia (Mourella) caerulea, the only known metallic stingless bee, has the following ethological features : 1-Brood cells are constructed successively. 2-Ovipositions are facultatively batched. 3-During the inter-oviposition period and the early part of the oviposition sequence, queen-worker interactions are very simple. 4-In the later part of the phase before food provisioning, the queen suddenly behaves very aggressively to one worker staying near a cell to be provisioned (detail in the text). This leads to violent agitation of workers on the brood area and to synchronous provisioning in collared cells. 5-Some workers lay trophic eggs on the inner-upper margins of provisioned cells. The sharp contrast between items 3 and 4 is never seen in other studied taxa. The ethological diagnosis of Mourella is given. Some ethological features in the oviposition process of most studied supraspecific taxa are compared and the evolution of the highly elaborated oviposition process of stingless bees is inferred.