The speciose Meliponini (stingless bees) compose a group that holds vast potential for contributing towards evolutionary insights. Many groups within the stingless bees are sadly understudied, both in their natural history and evolutionary relationships. Of the more diverse subgenera, Heterotrigona was examined using sequence data from multiple gene fragments of mitochondrion and nuclear DNA. Maximum parsimony and likelihood trees were constructed, providing both new information regarding the evolutionary history of this subgroup of the stingless bees, and additional data by which to compare and re-evaluate proposed genus-level molecular and morphological phylogenetic reconstructions. The resulting phylogeny will be useful in future inquiries regarding Heterotrigona.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Trigona
Keywords: phylogeny, bees
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