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All bees share a common ancestor, and all descendants of that ancestor are in the group of the bees.
This can be seen by various morphological characters shared by all bees but not with their closest
relatives, the Crabronidae. For instance, all bees but not the Digger wasps have at least some plumose
hairs. Another important feature is that on the hind leg, the first part of the tarsus is much broader
than the second to fifth part. But most chracteristically and importantly, virtually all bees live as
larva from pollen, nectar and floral oil. In essence, bees are wasps whose larvae have a floral diet.
For this reason, bees have been designated by the term Anthophila ('flower loving') for a long period.
The estimated number of bee species world wide is around 20,000. Naturally, in any particular area
the number of species is far below that, but still bees are quite diverse even in temperate regions like
the Netherlands. Thus, even within a single season I was able to photograph so many species, that it
is practical to create a small series of pages. Each page covers one or a few subfamilies - i.e., major
groupings within the family of the bees. There is relatively small number of such subfamilies, whose
phylogenetic relationships are still a matter of debate but a recent proposal based on morphological
as well as DNA data (Danforth et al. 2006) looks like the cladogram here.
The pages are organized in line with this proposal.
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