It is clear that bees provide the vital service of pollinating many plants, specifically the approximately 300,000 species of angiosperm (flowering) plants. However, their origins are not as clear.
Research published late last month in the Current Biology journal unlocks some of the mystery surrounding bees and where they came from. According to the research authors, bees “likely originated in Gondwana before the breakup of Africa and South America.”
They said bees probably first appeared during the Early Cretaceous period.
What is Gondwana?
Around 300 million years ago, there was a “supercontinent” on the Earth referred to as Pangea, explained the Wet Tropics Management Authority in Australia. Around 200 million years ago, this continent began to break up. It formed two large landmasses – Gondwana to the south and Laurasia to the north.
“Gondwana included most of the land masses in today’s southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar and Australasia, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, which have now moved entirely into the northern hemisphere,” said the Wet Tropics Management Authority.
According to the National Science Foundation in the U.S., there was no ice sheet on Gondwana, which was home to trees and large animals.
“Today, only geological formations, coal beds, and fossils remain as clues to Antarctica’s warm past,” it said. Some plants and animals with lineages in Gondwana currently live in Australia’s Gondwana Rainforests, per UNESCO.
What is the Cretaceous period?
Pangea began to break up at the start of the Jurassic period, and continued to during the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago, according to the National History Museum in the U.K.
“It is the last period in the Mesozoic Era. It comes after the Jurassic Period and before the Paleogene - the first period of the Cenozoic Era, our current era,” said the museum. “It lasted a long time, nearly 80 million years, making it the longest geological period of the Phanerozoic Eon, which began some 539 million years ago.”
This period is also known as the last time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
During the Early Cretaceous Epoch (from 145 million years ago to 100.5 million years ago) Africa/South America split from Australasia/India/Antarctica, said the Wet Tropics Management Authority.
“The climate was warmer and sea levels were higher. The first flowering plants were emerging,” it said. “By 90-to-100 million years ago Africa and Madagascar had split and India was moving north. Australia and Antarctica had just separated. Australia was developing its own unique dinosaurs.”
How do bees fit in?
According to the recent study, “the geological history of southern continents impacted early bee diversification,” and the origin of bees in the Southern Hemisphere parallels the histories of many flowering plants.
Researchers said that they used “a novel analysis of bee biogeography using extensive new genomic and fossil data,” to show that bees originated in Gondwana. They said that the early evolution of any major bee lineage appears to come from South American or African land masses.
“Subsequently, bees colonized northern continents via a complex history of vicariance [“the geographical separation of a population, typically by a physical barrier such as a mountain range or river,” per Oxford Languages] and dispersal,” said the publication.
Though Australia an India were part of Gondwana, researchers noted “notable early absences” from those landmasses that have “important implications” for understanding plant distribution and modes of pollination.
“Understanding the past is always important to understand the present. If we understand the kinds of habitats and the time when bees were doing so good that they spread all over the place, we get additional tools to understanding how we can help them today,” said study author Silas Bossert in an interview with NPR.
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