Antiquity of cleptoparasitism among bees revealed by morphometric and phylogenetic analysis of a <scp>P</scp> aleocene fossil nomadine ( <scp>H</scp> ymenoptera: <scp>A</scp> pidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Cleptoparasitism is a way of life involving the theft of resources by one animal from another. This behaviour occurs in many bee tribes but its origin and evolution remain obscure, particularly owing to the relative scarcity of bees in the fossil record. Hitherto, no fossil evidence has been recorded to trace the origin of cleptoparasitim among bees. In the current study, we present the first cleptoparasitic bee fossil, providing analyses of its taxonomic affinities and a complete description. The specimen also happens to be one of the earliest bee fossils, having been discovered in the spongo‐diatomitic volcanic paleolake of M enat ( P aleocene) in F rance. We employed geometric morphometrics of the forewing shape to assess the taxonomic affinities of the fossil with modern apoid tribes. Our dataset included 979 specimens representing 50 tribes and 225 extant species. Based on linear and geometric morphometrics, we demonstrate that the fossil's forewing shape is similar to that of A pidae, and particularly to that of the tribe E peolini ( N omadinae). The fossil is described as P aleoepeolus micheneri gen.n., sp.n. and provides the first direct evidence on the antiquity of cleptoparasitism among bees. This published work has been registered in Z oo B ank, http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:BBBE22176CAE48F9851F716B813DFEBF .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".