Family Halictidae

(4 subfamilies, 2 tribes, 75 genera, ~3500 species)

This family includes approximately 3500 species of morphologically diverse bees distributed on all continents except Antarctica. Monophyly of the halictids is well supported by numerous head and mouthpart characters (Alexander & Michener 1995). While halictid monophyly was well supported by Alexander & Michener (1995), relationships within and among subfamilies were not. In their analyses, Rophitinae were paraphyletic, placement of the Nomioidinae was unstable and sometimes rendered Rophitinae paraphyletic, and monophyly of the Halictinae was not well supported. Pesenko (1999) presented a reanalysis of the subfamily and tribal relationships based on morphology and concluded that each subfamily was monophyletic and the relationships were as follows:

Recent results based on single copy nuclear gene sequences clearly establish relationships among subfamilies, tribes, genera, and subgenera (Danforth 2002, Danforth et al. 2004; see figure below). All the subfamilies are recovered as monophyletic (with strong bootstrap and Bremer support and high posterior probabilities) and relationships among subfamilies and tribes are congruent with Pesenko’s (1999) morphological analysis.

Combining the DNA sequence data with recently described halictid fossils, we were able to establish that the early radiation of the halictid bees occurred during the Cretaceous. Sean Brady used recently developed Bayesian methods to develop a chronogram for the halictid bees that allowed us to date the antiquity of particular nodes within the tree (Danforth et al. 2004; see below)

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Data sets:

opsin, wingless, EF-1alpha published in Danforth et al. 2004 data set (.txt file)

Spreadsheet: Genbank numbers for the opsin, wingless, EF-1alpha data set published in Danforth et al. 2004 (.xls file)