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When Bees Get a Taste for Dead Things: Meat-Eating 'Vulture Bees' Sport Acidic Guts

posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 24 2021, @08:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the ZOMBEES! dept.

upstart writes:

When bees get a taste for dead things: Meat-eating 'vulture bees' sport acidic guts:

A little-known species of tropical bee has evolved an extra tooth for biting flesh and a gut that more closely resembles that of vultures rather than other bees.

Typically, bees don't eat meat. However, a species of stingless bee in the tropics has evolved the ability to do so, presumably due to intense competition for nectar.

"These are the only bees in the world that have evolved to use food sources not produced by plants, which is a pretty remarkable change in dietary habits," said UC Riverside entomologist Doug Yanega.

Honeybees, bumblebees, and stingless bees have guts that are colonized by the same five core microbes. "Unlike humans, whose guts change with every meal, most bee species have retained these same bacteria over roughly 80 million years of evolution," said Jessica Maccaro, a UCR entomology doctoral student.

Given their radical change in food choice, a team of UCR scientists wondered whether the vulture bees' gut bacteria differed from those of a typical vegetarian bee. They differed quite dramatically, according to a study the team published today in the American Society of Microbiologists' journal mBio.

Journal Reference:
Laura L. Figueroa, Jessica J. Maccaro, Erin Krichilsky, et al. Why Did the Bee Eat the Chicken? Symbiont Gain, Loss, and Retention in the Vulture Bee Microbiome, mBio [open] (DOI: 10.1128/mBio.02317-21)

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Wednesday November 24 2021, @09:01PM (3 children)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Wednesday November 24 2021, @09:01PM (#1199353) Homepage Journal

    I must have the vulture bees. Someone please smuggle me a few crates of vulture bees so I can release them into my local area.
    It would definitely be an improvement to the local fauna.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 24 2021, @11:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 24 2021, @11:27PM (#1199380)

    Can they be shipped by air freight or do they have to go in the carrion luggage?

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday November 25 2021, @12:04AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 25 2021, @12:04AM (#1199389) Journal
    Protip: cross them with killer bees, dose them with nuclear waste, and feed them with elvish and mannish flesh from your own hand.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:19AM (#1199868)

      ZomBees