Geometric morphometrics of the wings of Amazonian species of Melipona (Illiger, 1806) (Hymenoptera: Apidae).

Identifying and classifying species of stingless Neotropical bees is not a trivial task and requires the help of taxonomists and substantial study and training time. Also, there is a lack of taxonomically useful characters to differentiate among the megadiverse Neotropical group of stingless bees, and to recognize variation. Based on that, we have been testing alternatives to a character-based, efficient taxonomic determination of stingless bees, and herein we performed exploratory analyses of wing shape variation using geometric morphometrics.