Integrative taxonomy of a new species of a bumble bee-mimicking brood parasitic bee, Tetralonioidella mimetica (Hymenoptera, Apoidea, Apidae), investigated through phylogenomics
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
A new species of bumble bee-mimicking brood parasitic bee, Tetralonioidella mimetica Orr & Zhu, sp. nov. , is described from China. The systematic placement of this species was initially challenging but was resolved using a combination of phylogenomic and COI barcode analyses, which strongly support the new species as a member of the genus Tetralonioidella Strand. Interestingly, the new species mimics the color pattern of both a bumble bee ( Bombus Latreille), and its host Habropoda Smith species, a mimicry format previously unknown for bees. A review of the other Tetralonioidella species revealed three additional bee mimics, including two further likely model-host-brood parasite mimicry complexes. To our knowledge, these represent the first documented three-tiered mimetic systems in bees. Several additional taxonomic actions recently became necessary in these and related taxa: Tetralonioidella meghalayensis Dohling & Dey, 2024 is synonymized syn. nov. with Habropoda radoszkowskii (Dalla Torre, 1896) and Varthemapistra Engel, stat. rev. is again synonymized with Habrophorula Lieftinck. Our results also highlight issues with the generic classification of the tribe Melectini as currently used, as Melecta Latreille was found paraphyletic in relation to the remaining melectine genera. As a first step toward resolving this issue, we return the Melecta subgenus Eupavlovskia Popov, stat. rev. to genus level and discuss the ongoing systematic uncertainties regarding melectine taxonomy.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 it