Evaluation of sociality in a Caribbean halictid bee

Environmental conditions have been associated with the evolution of sociality in bees of the

Halictidae family where eusociality is more common in warmer than in colder environments.

This hypothesis has not been examined closely in a tropical island context. Although the tropical

islands are known for their warm climates, in some cases resource limitations make them more

like temperate regions than the continental tropics. The Caribbean sweat bee Lasioglossum

(Dialictus) ferrerii Baker (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) has been reported to be communal or

semisocial. However this has not been evaluated with morphological and genetic methods. In

this study we collected foraging individuals and dissected them to determine if they were

inseminated. Our preliminary results indicate that most of the examined individuals had

developed ovaries suggesting that L. (Dialictus) ferrerii is likely to be communal rather than

social. We plan to corroborate this data with microsatellite markers.