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Record W4410729126 · doi:10.3389/frbee.2025.1395037

Chromosome evolution in bees

2025· article· en· W4410729126 on OpenAlexaff
Robin E. Owen

Bibliographic record

VenueFrontiers in Bee Science · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldAgricultural and Biological Sciences
TopicPlant and animal studies
Canadian institutionsMount Royal University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsBiologyChromosomeEvolutionary biologyZoologyGeneticsGene

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Of the about 1850 species of Hymenoptera for which chromosome counts are known, only just over 200 of these are bees (Apoidea). Haploid numbers ( n ) range from 3-28, which probably does represent the true range of chromosome numbers in this superfamily. The modal number is 17, with another peak at n =9, representing a clade of meliponid bees which has been well studied. Although much is known about the chromosomes of bees there is still much to learn about overall trends in haploid number and chromosome organization. We are still lacking this information for many important families of bees. The only andrenid bee karyotyped, Andrena togashii has the low n of 3, so we certainly need to know which other species in this family have low chromosome numbers to see if this is an exception and to further test the Minimum Interaction Theory (MIT) of Imai and colleagues which predicts the evolutionary increase in chromosome number. In general, an overall increase from low numbers ( n =3-8) to the higher numbers found in the Apidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, and Megachilidae (modal numbers 17, 16, 16, 16, respectively) does appear to be followed. However, within groups this is not always the case; the Meliponid clade with n =9 being an example. The potential adaptive value of chromosome number per se is of great interest. I propose a hypothesis to account for the high ( n =25) chromosome number found in the social parasitic bumble bee subgenus Psithyrus . More sophisticated techniques beyond chromosome counting and karyotyping using C-banding, will yield much more detailed information about chromosomal rearrangements as shown by the work on the neotropical meliponid bees by the Brazilian cytogeneticists, and when these are applied to other taxa of bees will undoubtedly reveal features of great interest. Genomic approaches are starting to identify chromosomal rearrangements such as inversions and this holds much potential to explore their adaptive significance.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.202
Threshold uncertainty score0.128

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.014
GPT teacher head0.208
Teacher spread0.195 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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