The specimen, at least 35-45 million years older than any other known bee fossil, has given rise to a newly-named family called Melittosphecidae - insects that share some of the features of both bees and wasps. It supports the theory that pollen-dependent bees evolved from their meat-eating predecessors, the wasps.

"This is the oldest known bee we've ever been able to identify, and it shares some of the features of wasps," said George Poinar, a professor of zoology at OSU and international expert in the study of life forms preserved in ancient amber. "But overall it's more bee than wasp, and gives us a pretty good idea of when these two types of insects were separating on their evolutionary paths."

Just as important, Poinar said, the discovery points to the mechanism that could have allowed for the rapid expansion and diversity of flowering plants around that time - the "angiosperms" that depend on some mechanism other than wind to spread their seeds. Prior to that, the world was dominated by "gymnosperms," largely conifer trees, which used wind for pollination and re-seeding.

These changes took place during the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 65.5 million to 145.5 million years ago. The earliest angiosperms didn't really begin to spread rapidly until a little over 100 millions years ago, a time that appears to correspond with the evolution of bees seen in the new fossil.

"Flowering plants are very important in the evolution of life," Poinar said. "They can reproduce more quickly, develop more genetic diversity, spread more easily and move into new habitats. But prior to the evolution of bees they didn't have any strong mechanism to spread their pollen, only a few flies and beetles that didn't go very far."

The amber specimen Poinar studied, which came from a mine in the Hukawng Valley of northern Myanmar, has certain features that resemble wasps, such as a double spine on the middle tibia and narrow hind legs. But it also has branched hairs all over its body and other key features characteristic of pollen-spreading bees. This species, named Melittosphex burmensis, is long extinct.

"In archaeology, a lot of people look at the species Archaeopteryx, which is believed to be the first bird and was sort of half-bird, half-reptile," Poinar said. "Species such as that can be critically important in helping us to understand when evolution went in different directions. In that sense, this fossil may help us understand when wasps, which were mostly just meat-eating carnivores, turned into bees that could pollinate plants and serve a completely different biological function."

Flowering plants, among other things, account for practically all of the food plants on Earth and much of the food supply for humans and many other animal species. There are now about 20,000 species of bees, which use pollen to feed their young, and over millions of years they have created numerous physical and behavioral adaptations to make them some of Earth's most effective pollinators.

Considering its age, the bee specimen itself is in remarkable condition, showing individual hairs on undamaged portions of its thorax, legs, abdomen and head. The legs and wings are clearly visible. It's a very small bee, consistent with evidence that some of the earliest Cretaceous flowers were also quite small.

Insects trapped in amber, researchers say, often provide some of the most vivid and lifelike glimpses into the distant past. Amber is a semi-precious stone that begins as tree sap, which can ooze down and trap insects or other small things, then ultimately fossilize. It's also a natural embalming agent that can protect and display specimens in nearly perfect, three-dimensional form millions of years later.

This phenomenon has been invaluable in scientific and ecological research, and among other things, formed the scientific premise in the movie Jurassic Park, for the "dinosaur DNA" found in mosquitoes. Poinar, one of the world's experts in the study of amber, also has used it to provide a vivid re-creation of an ancient forest in the book "The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World."

Theres More To Bees Than Honey
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Oct 30 - Winnie the Pooh thought the only reason for being a bee was to make honey, but CSIRO Entomology scientists with their Australian and international colleagues have shown there's much more to bees.

The findings from the Honey bee Genome Sequencing Project are published today in 'Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera', in Nature. CSIRO scientists were part of the international consortium, with Visiting Fellow at CSIRO Entomology Dr Charles Claudianos leading one of the teams.

Valuable information is now available to scientists to study characteristics associated with the genome.

"This is the first sequencing of a social organism other than a human being," Dr Claudianos says.

"We can compare the sequences from various genomes of different organisms and we can put human biology into that context."

Other science journals are simultaneously publishing papers based on the international Honey bee Genome Sequencing Project. CSIRO scientists are authors of papers on several subjects including sensitivity to insecticides, crop pollination, bee silk and telomeres.

The sequencing of the genome has given insights into why honeybees are sensitive to insecticides. Research by Dr Claudianos, CSIRO's Dr John Oakeshott and colleagues in the United Kingdom, the United States and France has uncovered a possible cause.

In their paper, 'A deficit of detoxification enzymes: pesticide sensitivity and environmental response in the honeybee' in Insect Molecular Biology, they reveal that the honeybee genome has fewer protein coding genes than other insects that have been studied.

And some of the most marked differences occur in groups of detoxifying enzymes associated with insecticide resistance in other species.

CSIRO's Dr Saul Cunningham and colleagues in Germany, France and the United States studied crop pollination by the European honey bee and their paper, 'Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops', is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

"While we knew that bee pollination was vital in global crop production, we had no idea of the extent of this reliance," Dr Cunningham says.

The research has also confirmed that one in three mouthfuls of food comes from insect pollinated crops.

A team of CSIRO researchers has discovered that the proteins of bee silk, unlike the silk of spiders and silkworms, are small and non-repetitive. This means bee silk is considerably more amenable to artificial production than the silk proteins of silkworm and spiders. The group has identified the honeybee fibre genes and their results have just been published in, Genome Research - 'A highly divergent gene cluster in honeybees encodes a novel silk family'.

"Silk is an exceptionally strong material and many groups are vying to make the first artificial silk," lead author Dr Tara Sutherland says. "Most people are unaware that honeybees produce silk but they do and we have studied it."

Now the honeybee has been identified as the first insect that has a system similar to humans, CSIRO's Dr Karl Gordon and a colleague in the United States have described the telomeres in honey bees and identified the gene for telomerase. Their paper 'Canonical TTAGG-repeat telomeres and telomerase in the honey bee Apis mellifera' has just appeared in Genome Research.

Telomeres protect the end of chromosomes. In humans, the enzyme telomerase replenishes the telomeres early in development. Shutting down of the telomerase activity later in development results in telomere shortening during ageing. One important change in cancer cells is that the telomerase is no longer shut down, allowing unlimited cell division. The behaviour of telomerase is also critical for the survival of cloned animals.

The discovery of a simple telomere system in the honeybee allows study of the role of telomerase in the very different ageing of the three bee castes.

The Honey bee Genome Sequencing Project was made up of members from university laboratories throughout the world, the US Department of Agriculture bee laboratories, and the United States bee industry. It was principally funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute in the United States.

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