干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

A solitary anthophorid bee (Anthophora sp. nov.) in the Sinai desert showed sexually dimorphic diurnal activity patterns, whereby males defended territories containing clumps of the flower Alkanna orientalis between 0815 and 1430 hours while females fed exclusively on these same flowers only in the early morning up to 0900 hours and from about 1400 hours with virtually no male-female overlap on any one particular plant. Thus males defended the floral resources through long periods when conspecific females were absent. Female nests were usually within the male territories, however, and females copulated mainly with resident males. This system therefore has some similarities to resource defence polygyny, with territoriality functioning for mating advantage. The male strategy, however, was inappropriate merely to secure matings, as these occurred principally in the early morning and thereafter territories could have been abandoned for the day without loss of copulations; but by maintaining patrols throughout the day, a male would additionally ensure that there were better quality floral reserves in areas where his own females would feed to stock that day’s nest-cells, and thereby he achieved matings with better-resourced females. The behaviour of the male Anthophora is therefore a form of territoriality that achieves potentially larger offspring, thus serving as pre-zygotic paternal investment.