The wild silkmoth genus Sinobirma Bryk, 1944 is a poorly known monotypic taxon from the eastern end of the Himalaya Range. It was convincingly proposed to be closely related to some members of an exclusively Afro-tropical group of Saturniidae, but its biogeographical and evolutionary history remains enigmatic. After examining recently collected material from Tibet, northern India, and northeast...

1. While the discussion of native pollinator decline has grown dramatically worldwide, information on how native pollinators utilise floral resources in natural and human-altered landscapes remains relatively limited. Specifically, little is known about the collection of pollen, an essential component of larval and adult bee food, and whether pollen collection patterns change across habitats, s...

Workers of two bumblebee species, Bombus terrestris L. and B. pascuorum Scopoli, had to find the way of escape out of a test tube closed with a paper membrane stretched against its open end. Nearly all of the tested individuals solved successfully that task by tearing a hole in the membrane closing the tube. However, their escape behaviour showed significant interspecific differences. B. terres...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, use short-lived repellent scent marks to distinguish and reject flowers that have recently been visited by themselves or by siblings, and so save time that would otherwise be spent in probing empty flowers. Conversely, both honey bees and bumblebees, Bombus spp., can mark rewarding flowers with scent marks that promote probing by conspecifics. We examined detection o...

The ecological impacts of alien species invasion are a major threat to global biodiversity. The increasing number of invasion events by alien species and the high cost and difficulty of eradicating invasive species once established require the development of new methods and tools for predicting the most susceptible areas to invasion. Invasive pollinators pose serious threats to biodiversity and...

Bees are associated with a remarkable diversity of microorganisms, including unicellular parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The application of next-generation sequencing approaches enables the identification of this rich species composition as well as the discovery of previously unknown associations. Using high-throughput polyadenylated ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing, we investigated t...

Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) have undergone a documented Europe-wide decline in recent years, mostly attributable to destruction of forage and nest sites caused by agricultural intensification. This study was set up to quantify species-specific nest-site preferences of observed UK species for various types of field and forest boundary habitat. In total, 1287 observations were made of seven common b...

This study investigates alternative approaches to locating bumble bee nests for scientific research. We present results from three trials designed to assess: 1. The comparative efficiency of two detection dogs; 2. The ability of a dog to locate nests when carrying out repeat searches of agricultural habitats through the season; 3. The efficiency of a dog compared with human volunteers at findin...