ABSTRACT The abundant members of the Meliponini (stingless bees) are restricted to the tropics and subtropics worldwide. Because past studies of the anatomy of their mature larvae are limited, revealing little anatomical variation in the tribe, the current investigation attempts to examine this topic more thoroughly. Herein we describe the mature larvae of 30 species representing 16 genera of a total world fauna of perhaps 32 genera. Although the larvae of most taxa show little anatomical diversity, two species, Trigona (Duckeola) ghilianii Spinola and Trigona (Frieseomelitta) varia (Lepeletier), have mature larvae that differ remarkably in anatomical structure from those of other known stingless bees, and, further, their individual anatomies suggest a close evolutionary relationship. Larval evidence is presented indicating that Trichotrigona extranea (Camargo and Moure) is also related to these two taxa. Because eggs are often included in collections of bee larvae, this study adds descriptions of the eggs of 11 species of the Meliponini not previously characterized as well as a list of those that had been treated earlier.

中文翻译：

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无刺蜂（蜂科：Meliponini）成熟幼虫的部落内变异及11种卵的描述

摘要 Meliponini（无刺蜂）的丰富成员仅限于全球热带和亚热带地区。由于过去对其成熟幼虫的解剖学研究有限，在部落中几乎没有发现解剖学变异，因此目前的调查试图更彻底地研究这个话题。在这里，我们描述了 30 个物种的成熟幼虫，它们代表了世界动物群总数可能 32 个属的 16 个属。尽管大多数分类群的幼虫几乎没有显示出解剖学多样性，但有两个物种，即 Trigona (Duckeola) ghilianii Spinola 和 Trigona (Frieseomelitta) varia (Lepeletier)，它们的成熟幼虫在解剖结构上与其他已知的无刺蜜蜂有很大不同，而且，进一步，他们各自的解剖结构表明了密切的进化关系。提供的幼虫证据表明 Trichotrigona extranea (Camargo 和 Moure) 也与这两个分类群有关。由于卵通常包含在蜜蜂幼虫的集合中，因此这项研究增加了对 11 种蜜蜂蜂卵的描述，这些卵以前没有被描述过，并列出了之前处理过的那些。