Tear and sweat-drinking stingless bees. 3. Seven workers of Lisotrigona cacciae (Nurse) imbibing tears from the eye of H. Bӓnziger in self-portrait. The orange-marked bee (arrow) is on the 21 st of her 74 visits of her second day of lachryphagy. 4. Pinned specimen of L. furva Engel with large corbicular pollen loads. 5. Tetragonula fuscobalteata (Cameron) (left) and L. furva (right) sucking sweat on wrist of H. Bӓnziger. Note slightly larger T. fuscobalteata with whitish bands on mesosoma (lacking in L. furva), and yellowish-brown metasoma (blackish in L. furva). Scale bar 2 mm, except 3 mm in Fig. 3. Photos H. Bӓnziger.

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... moths are unable to digest proteins in the adult stage, including, unexpectedly, the vampire moths (8 species of Calyptra Ochsenheimer, Erebidae) which sequester salt as the main substance from blood. In Thailand, the following non-lachryphagous stingless bees are known to settle on human skin to imbibe sweat: Tetragonula fuscobalteata (Cameron) (Fig. 5), T. hirashimai (Sakagami), T. pagdeni (Schwarz), T. pagdeniformis (Sakagami), T. sirindhornae (Michener & Boongird), T. testaceitarsis (Cameron), Lepidotrigona doipaensis (Schwarz), L. flavibasis (Cockerell), L. satun Attasopa & Bӓnziger, and L. terminata (Smith) (Bӓnziger et al., 2009; H.B., unpubl. data). At present it is not known ...

Context 2

... March to early May tend to have the highest temperature and lowest humidity at the study sites (T: min-max 26-35.7 o C, averages 27-33 o C; RH: min-max 25-67%, averages 35-54%). Dozens of the mentioned sweat sucking meliponines may crawl at the same time all over one's skin to avidly lick perspiration, often in mixed-species assemblages (e.g., Fig. 5) and annoying persistence. Under such conditions, water appears to be the more important resource, presumably also for Lisotrigona which come in greater numbers, whether sweat-drinking or tear-harvesting. Despite the abundance and accessibility of sweat, all marked tearcollecting Lisotrigona kept undeterred their regular bouts in ...

Context 3

... lachryphagy, not all minute meliponines exhibit tear-drinking habits. The smallest exponent of the widespread and species-rich genus Tetragonula Moure is the tiny T. fuscobalteata, head width 1.39-1.46 mm (Sakagami, 1978), hence only slightly larger than L. furva. It is one of six species of Tetragonula frequently found to suck sweat from H.B. (Fig. 5), but never his tears, nor are we aware of any report of an eye visitation from anywhere, although it is common and wide-spread, from mainland SE Asia to Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, and Sulawesi (Schwarz, 1939;Sakagami, 1978;Rasmussen, 2008;Lee et al., 2016). This is interpreted as a further indication that lachryphagy is not a ...