Bees flyingon dead animals
Bees collect pollen and nectar? Most do, but in Costa Rica species have developed an appetite for carrion. This is also evident in their guts.
Nowhere is the diversity of insects higher than in tropical rainforests, where evolution has produced some extraordinary special cases. These include the so-called vulture bees, which feed completely differently from most other wild bees. This is also reflected in their guts: these bees prefer carrion and have a special microbiome for this purpose, write Laura Figueroa from Cornell University in Ithaca and her team in "mBio": Accordingly, their intestinal flora shows great similarities with that of real vultures.
For their study, the research group had collected around 160 bees from 17 species in the Costa Rican rainforest, which feed either on pollen, carrion or a little of both. To do this, they attracted the vulture bees with dead chicken, making an interesting observation, according to an announcement by Quinn McFrederick, an entomologist involved in the study. The animals collected the carrion much like other bees collect pollen and transported it to the nest.
To process this food, vulture bees rely on a completely unique microbiome among wild bees. Even species that use meat as well as pollen strongly resembled pure pollen processors, while carrion consumers were extremely different. Their microbiome, for example, contains acid-loving bacteria that are not found in honeybees, bumblebees and co. "These bacteria are similar to those that settle in the intestines of vultures or hyenas. They probably help protect the animals from pathogens from the carrion." Other bacteria help digest meat. Pollen users, on the other hand, consistently have the same five main bacterial species in their digestive systems across species.
Vulture bees even produce honey as well, which is said to be edible and quite sweet. It is stored in chambers separate from those containing the stored meat. But they don't give up this honey without resistance: although they don't have a stinger, several species have powerful mouthparts with which they can bite painfully. And some of them also produce caustic secretions in their jaws that cause nasty blisters on the skin.
Spectrum of Science
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