Millions of days ago , bee evolve from substance - munching wasps , but small is known about their transition from carnivorous dirt ball to flower - seeking pollen - feeder . A newly discover fossilise bee , found stop dead in sentence inamber from Myanmar , could cast off some light , being the first record of a primitive bee with pollen .
Insects like bees arepollinators ; as they journey from flower to bloom in lookup of tasty pollen andsugary nectar , diminutive yellow food grain of pollen ( fundamentally the plant equivalent of spermatozoan ) attach to their bodies and are spread to the female reproductive social organisation of plants , allow fecundation to occur . Without these six - legged pollinator , the plants would struggle to reproduce , and without the pollen and nectar they check , the bees would go thirsty . pollinator and florescence plants have co - evolved over millions of years to produce their perfect partnership .
The bee trapped in amber , newly namedDiscoscapa apiculaand describe in the journalBioOne Complete , has pollen metric grain on its consistency , suggesting that it visited at least one peak before it run across its sticky end 100 million years ago , during the mid - Cretaceous period . The bee belong to a brand - new family , genus , and mintage .
" The fossil phonograph record of bee is pretty vast , but most are from the last 65 million years and look a good deal like modern bees , ” allege Oregon State University researcher George Poinar Jr in astatement . “ Fossils like the one in this study can tell us about the changes certain wasp lineages underwent as they became palynivores – pollen eaters . "
It ’s thought that pollen - wipe out bees first appear around130 million years ago , not long after flowers first evolved . In addition to being dotted with pollen grains , the fossilized dirt ball give birth another clue that it had been visiting flowers not long before it died ; it shares its amber casket with tiny beetle leech , which still plague bees today . The fossils are the earliest evidence of these parasites ever found .
" Additional evidence that the fossil bee had chaffer flowers are the 21 beetle triungulins – larvae – in the same piece of gold that were catch a ride back to the bee ’s nest to dine on bee larvae and their commissariat , food pull up stakes by the female , " Poinar aver . " It is certainly possible that the large number of triungulins caused the bee to accidently fly into the resin . "
The bee trap in amber part sealed features with today ’s bee , such as body hair known as plumose hair , a rounded pronotal lobe on the upper part of its body , and a brace of spurs on its back leg . It also shares traits with apoid wasps , from which bees evolve , such as low - place antennal sockets and certain wing - vein characteristics . But the louse has a unparalleled feature article too .
" Something unique about the new family that ’s not find on any extant or extinct lineage of apoid wasps or bee is a bifurcated shaft , " said Poinar . This intend that the base of the worm ’s antennae has two segments .
The bee , deal traits with both the wasp it evolved from and the bees that live today , is helping scientist better understand the evolutionary history of this iconic group of insect , 100 million years after it clank - down into a blob of steamy tree goo .
