Brood mites (Proctotydaeus furnarius) and their relationship to Australian stingless bees

Presented by Genevieve Law

PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

Supervisors: Dr Rosalyn Gloag (USyd) with Owen Seeman (QM) and Dr Matt Shaw (AM)

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are eusocial bees found in tropical and subtropical areas around the world and play important roles in ecological and agricultural pollination. The species Tetragonula carbonaria and Tetragonula hockingsi have wide distributions along the eastern coast of Australia, making them popular pollinators and ‘pets’. While mites with close relationships to Neoptropical, stingless bees (and other bee taxa) have been described and shown to have important fitness effects on their hosts, symbiotic mites with relationships to Australian stingless bees have not yet been characterised. Here we present the newly described species Proctotydaeus furnarius, which is only found within the brood cells of the Australian stingless bees T. carbonaria and T. hockingsi.

In this talk, Genevieve will speak about how they discovered and described this unusual species of mite (in collaboration with Owen Seeman from the Queensland Museum and Dr Matt Shaw from the Australian Museum), including characterisation of its life cycle within the brood cells of the bees and genetic barcoding to compare divergence between sampled mites. P. furnarius is a fascinating species of mite, and they are only beginning to uncover its interesting roles within the colonies of stingless bees.