Monthly event of the Australian Native Bee Association
20th September 2 – 3 pm
All are welcome to attend in person at Bulimba Community Centre, 1 Barramul St, Bulimba, Brisbane. Free for members, $5 for non-members.
ANBA members can also attend online, a link to join will be sent by email approximately 1-2 days prior to the event.
AGM of the Brisbane Branch, plus a seminar: Genetic insights into Australia's stingless bees by Genevieve Law
At the Brisbane branch AGM (Annual General Meeting), we will report on our year and elect our new Branch committee. We have not received any written nominations for the positions of Secretary and Treasurer so will accept nominations from the floor. (Note that the National ANBA will also be hosted by the Brisbane branch at our next (October) meeting.)
Genetic insights into Australia's stingless bees
By Genevieve Law, University of Sydney
In Australia, there is increasing interest in stingless bees, including in agricultural pollination, ecological pollination, and meliponiculture. However, many aspects of the diversity and distribution of Australia’s stingless bees remain poorly known. My PhD aims to characterise the distinctiveness of Australian stingless bees (Austroplebeia and Tetragonula) at a population and species level. In other words, why do we have the species and populations of stingless bees that we have in Australia today, and what evolutionary pathways are they travelling on? In my talk, I will focus on two areas of my research: firstly, I’ll discuss genetic work that I conducted for my Honours and PhD projects on the widely kept stingless bee species Tetragonula hockingsi. T. hockingsi can be broken into three distinct populations (Cape York, Northern Queensland, and Southern Queensland), and these populations are quite genetically distinct. We also investigated to what extent these populations hybridise, both in a natural region in central Queensland where the Northern and Southern populations meet, and in Brisbane, where beekeeping has led there to be multiple populations present there. Understanding where the populations of T. hockingsi are on the pathway to becoming different species is vital for appropriate management of both natural and managed populations. I’ll also talk about our work on characterising the distinctiveness of the Austroplebeia species and populations at a genetic level. Previous work on Austroplebeia has mainly focussed on morphology, but here we use genetic to gain a better understanding into the divergence between the Austroplebeia species. We focussed on A. australis, the most widespread of the Austroplebeia (it spans four Australian states and territories!). A. australis also has a number of distinctive colour morphs, including the striking orange abdomens seen in some populations in Queensland. In summary, our Australian stingless bees have many fascinating stories to tell, and in my talk I’ll be sharing some of the stories that genetics has revealed.
Genevieve Law is a PhD student in the BEE lab at the University of Sydney, supervised by Ros Gloag, James Hereward, and Nathan Lo. Her PhD project focuses on the Australian stingless bees (Austroplebeia and Tetragonula) and aims to characterise and explain patterns of genetic divergence between their populations. She utilises approaches including genomics and behavioural experiments to characterise how stingless bee populations and species are different, in order to understand how factors from cellular biology to landscape ecology could be driving their divergence. A greater understanding of the speciation processes in our stingless bees provided by this work will improve understanding of their ecology and evolution, as well as their management in Australia.
