Evolution
At least 30 lineages of mites have specialized in living with bees. Most mite species associated with bee nests are either sparophagous or cleptophagous. Sarophagous is when mites eat hive debris, especially parts of fungi growing. Cleptophagous is when mites eat pollen and other nutrients stored by bees. Interestingly, the small few that have evolved to become parasitic appear to have arisen from predatory lineages. The family Laelapidae has 12 genera that predate on sting-less bees (Meliponinae). Thus, it appears that the brood parasites (Varroidae) of honeybees (Apinae) evolved from the Laelapidae family.
Read more about this topic: Varroa Jacobsoni
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like Freud, Jung believes that the human mind contains archaic remnants, residues of the long history and evolution of mankind. In the unconscious, primordial “universally human images” lie dormant. Those primordial images are the most ancient, universal and “deep” thoughts of mankind. Since they embody feelings as much as thought, they are properly “thought feelings.” Where Freud postulates a mass psyche, Jung postulates a collective psyche.”
—Patrick Mullahy (b. 1912)
“As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)