The Andrenidae (commonly known as mining bees) are a large, nearly

cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Food and drink * Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo" History * Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953 Hotels and resorts * Cosmopoli ...

family of solitary, ground-nesting bees. Most of the family's diversity is located in temperate or arid areas (warm temperate xeric). It includes some enormous genera (e.g., ''

Andrena ''Andrena'' is a genus of bees in the family Andrenidae. With over 1,500 species, it is one of the largest genera of animals. It is a strongly monophyletic group that is difficult to split into more manageable divisions; currently, ''Andrena'' i ...

'' with over 1300 species, and '' Perdita'' with over 700). One of the subfamilies,

Oxaeinae The Oxaeinae are an exclusively American subfamily of the bee family Andrenidae, consisting of large (13–26 mm), fast-flying bees, often with large eyes. The four constituent genera, with a total of 19 described species, range from the Uni ...

, is so different in appearance that they were typically accorded family status, but careful

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

analysis reveals them to be an offshoot within the Andrenidae, very close to the

Andreninae The bee subfamily Andreninae is a nearly cosmopolitan lineage, with most of its diversity in one genus, '' Andrena'', which contains over 1500 species. The remaining four genera in the subfamily only contain a total of 9 species. Females of three ...

. C. D. Michener (2007) ''The Bees of the World'', 2nd Edition, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Description

The Andrenidae are typically small to moderate-sized bees, which often have scopae on the basal segments of the leg in addition to the

tibia The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

, and are commonly

oligolectic The term oligolecty is used in pollination ecology to refer to bees that exhibit a narrow, specialized preference for pollen sources, typically to a single family or genus of flowering plants. The preference may occasionally extend broadly to mult ...

(especially within the subfamily

Panurginae The bee subfamily Panurginae is a diverse lineage of 33 genera in 7 tribes. They are particularly diverse in the New World, though scarce in the tropics, and in the Old World they can be found primarily in the Palaearctic and Africa, but absent ...

). They can be separated from other bee families by the presence of two subantennal sutures on the face, a primitive trait shared with the sphecoid wasps. Many groups also have depressions or grooves called "foveae" on the head near the upper margin of the eyes, another feature seen in

sphecoids The Spheciformes is a paraphyletic assemblage of insect families which collectively comprise the "sphecoid wasps". Larvae are carnivorous. These are all the members of the superfamily Apoidea, which are not bees and which in older classificat ...

, and also shared by some

Colletidae The Colletidae are a family of bees, and are often referred to collectively as plasterer bees or polyester bees, due to the method of smoothing the walls of their nest cells with secretions applied with their mouthparts; these secretions dry int ...

. Andrenids are among the few bee families that have no

cleptoparasite Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when fo ...

s. The family contains a very large number of taxa, especially among the Panurginae, whose

sting Sting may refer to: * Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger * Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself Fictional characters and entities * Sting (Middle-eart ...

apparatus is so reduced that they are effectively unable to sting. The subfamily Oxaeinae is rather different in appearance from the other subfamilies, being large, fast-flying bees with large eyes, resembling some of the larger

. The Andrenidae are known from the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

boundary, around 34 Mya, of the Florissant shale.

"Nocturnal" species

The Andrenidae are one of the four bee families that contain some

crepuscular In zoology, a crepuscular animal is one that is active primarily during the twilight period, being matutinal, vespertine, or both. This is distinguished from diurnal and nocturnal behavior, where an animal is active during the hours of daylig ...

species; these species are active only at dusk or in the early evening, and therefore technically considered "

vespertine ''Vespertine'' is the fourth studio album by Icelandic recording artist Björk. It was released on 27 August 2001 in the United Kingdom by One Little Independent Records and in the United States by Elektra Entertainment. Production on the album ...

". In the Andrenidae, such species occur primarily in the subfamily Panurginae. These bees, as is typical in such cases, have greatly enlarged

ocelli A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-l ...

, though one crepuscular subgenus of ''

'' has normal ocelli. The other families with some crepuscular species are

Halictidae Halictidae is the second-largest family of bees (clade Anthophila) with nearly 4,500 species. Halictid species are an extremely diverse group that can vary greatly in appearance. These bees occur all over the world and are found on every contine ...

, Colletidae, and

Apidae Apidae is the largest family within the superfamily Apoidea, containing at least 5700 species of bees. The family includes some of the most commonly seen bees, including bumblebees and honey bees, but also includes stingless bees (also used for ...

References

External links

''Andrena'' Image Gallery from Atlas HymenopteraNorth American Andrenidae

Identification guides to eastern North American Andrenidae
{{Taxonbar, from=Q853287 Bee families