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 more specific idea of evolution now reached is—a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“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)