Plebeia

Life-forms

Superregnum: Eukaryota
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Cladus: Protostomia
Cladus: Ecdysozoa
Cladus: Panarthropoda
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Hexapoda
Classis: Insecta
Cladus: Dicondylia
Subclassis: Pterygota
Cladus: Metapterygota
Infraclassis: Neoptera
Cladus: Eumetabola
Cladus: Endopterygota
Superordo: Hymenopterida
Ordo: Hymenoptera
Subordo: Apocrita
Superfamilia: Apoidea

Familia: Apidae
Subfamilia: Apinae
Tribus: Meliponini
Genus: Plebeia Species (9): P. catamarcensis – P. droryana – P. emerina – P. meridionalis – P. nigriceps – P. remota – P. saiqui – P. wittmanni –
References

Roig-Alsina, A. & Alvarez, L.J. 2017. Southern distributional limits of Meliponini bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae) in the Neotropics: taxonomic notes and distribution of Plebeia droryana and P. emerinoides in Argentina. Zootaxa 4244(2): 261–269. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4244.2.7. Reference page.

Plebeia is a genus of mostly small-bodied stingless bees, formerly included in the genus Trigona. Most of the ~40 species are placed in the subgenus (Plebeia) (s.s.), but there also are four species in the subgenus (Scaura). They differ in only minor structural details, primarily of the hind leg, from other genera that were formerly treated as constituents of Trigona. In some classifications, the genus Schwarziana is treated as a subgenus within Plebeia, but recent morphological analyses indicate that Schwarziana is a distinct lineage, while Plebeia is paraphyletic.[1]

Due to their small sizes, in Brazil many species are known as abelha-mirim (literally "small bee") in Portuguese.
Range

Species of the genus Plebeia occur from Mexico to Argentina.

A few feral colonies of P. emerina exist in the United States, the result of experimental imports in the 1950s.[2][3]
List of species

List of species:[4][5]

P. alvarengai
P. catamarcensis
P. cora
P. domiciliorum
P. droryana
P. emerina
P. flavocincta
P. franki
P. frontalis
P. fulvopilosa
P. goeldiana
P. intermedia
P. jatiformis
P. julianii
P. kerri
P. llorentei
P. lucii
P. malaris
P. manantlensis
P. margaritae
P. melanica
P. meridionalis
P. mexica
P. minima
P. molesta
P. mosquito
P. moureana
P. nigriceps
P. parkeri
P. peruvicola
P. phrynostoma
P. poecilochroa
P. pulchra
P. remota
P. saiqui
P. tica
P. tobagoensis
P. variicolor
P. wittmanni

References

Melo, Gabriel A.R. (October 2015). "New species of the stingless bee genus Schwarziana (Hymenoptera, Apidae)". Revista Brasileira de Entomologia. 59 (4): 290–293. doi:10.1016/j.rbe.2015.08.001.
Agarwal, Robin (3 June 2021). "New Colony of Rare Bees Found By a Four-Year-Old". Bay Nature. Retrieved 29 August 2021.
Davies, Erica. "4-year-old girl discovers rare stingless bees in California". Yahoo News.
"ITIS Standard Report Page: Plebeia". www.itis.gov. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
Grüter, Christoph (2020). Stingless Bees: Their Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution. Springer New York. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60090-7. ISBN 978-3-030-60089-1.