THE underclass rarely decides on who gets to be royalty, and despised interlopers never do. Yet in certain bee societies, a tiny parasitic fly has a big influence on which bee becomes queen. Not only that, the fly dictates the status of many of her subjects.
Sean O’Donnell of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues Adam Smith and William Wcislo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, made the discovery while studying a species of sweat bee that lives in the tropical forests of Panama and Costa Rica.
Megalopta genalis lives in colonies, where young female…
