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Family Melittidae Schenck
The bees of this family are distributed in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere and in Africa, the greatest number of genera and species are found in warm xeric areas. It is subdivided in to three subfamilies namely, Dasypodainae, Meganomiinae and Melittinae. In southern Africa all three subfamilies are found. A moderate number of species are also found in palearctic region. A few species are known from nearctic region whereas melittids are not yet known from tropical America and in Australia.
Revisionary works can be consulted from Michener (1981), Warncke (1973) and Wu (1978). Some of the important references with regard to its phylogeny are: Michener & Greenberg (1980), Roig-Alsina & Michener (1993), Alexander & Michener (1995) and Michener (2000). Larvae of various genera of this family has been dealt by McGinley (1974, 1981) & Rozen (1977). Some of the melittids collect oils from flowers (Cane et al., 1983) and provision deposits are of variable shapes often subspherica as in most halictids and andrenids (Malyshev, 1929; Rozen, 1977 & Rozen and Jacobson, 1980).
Summary of included subfamilies and tribes and, their respective genera found in our specified region:
S.
No.
Subfamilies Tribe
Genera found in our specified region
A.
1. Dasypodaini Eremaphanta Popov 2. Promelittini 3. Sambini B. Meganomiinae C. Melittinae Melitta Kirby
Dr. Rajiv K. Gupta
Department of Zoology
Jai Narain Vyas University
Jodhpur 342 005, India
Ph. +91-291-272 6666
E-mail: [email protected]
Visit "An Updating Bibliography of the Bees of the World" by the same author for the authors' linked references mentioned in this document.