Scientists find gynandromorph species among Hymenopterans

July 9, 2020 11:35am IST   Source

    In a study published on 27 Feb 2020 in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research , researchers described a bee that's male on its left side and female on its right side. The rare condition is known as gynandromorphy. Gynandromorphy is an anomaly that results in an organism phenotypically expressing both male and female characteristics. When the bee nest was collected, the bee was a larva enclosed in a brood cell, a chamber in the honeycomb where young bees grow, and the scientists noticed that it was a gynandromorph when it emerged as an adult.

This is the first known example of gynandromorphy in the bee species Megalopta amoena. It is only the second such case found in the genus Megalopta , or sweat bees, in over 20 years of field research. The phenotype expressed in the head has a distinct bilateral split between male and female characters. The side with male characters is on the left, and the side with female characters is on the right, accordingly, referred to as the male side and the female side.

On the bee's head, the female side has a forward-facing antenna and a more prominent, stronger mandible. The female side's hind leg is also larger and hairier than its counterpart on the male side. Hairs used for pollen collection cover the female half of the lower body, while the male side of the body shows few hairs. The gynandromorph bee also demonstrated foraging behavior that differed from that of males and females in the nest. It was active much earlier in the day than its fellows, emerging during the darkness of the very early morning hours, while male and female bees showed almost no activity during that time.