Florida Museum of Natural History
Key points
- Paleontologists working in a cave on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola have discovered the first-known instance of ancient bees nesting inside pre-existing fossil cavities.
- Burrowing bees generally prefer to make their nests out in the open. There is only one other documented case of burrowing bees making their nests inside caves. In this case, the likely cause for this aberrant behavior is a lack of topsoil outside the cave and an abundance of accumulated silt within.
- Many of the fossils were likely transported to the cave by giant barn owls. Evidence, including owl bones and eggshells, suggest these extinct owls lived in the cave through many successive generations, as did the bees.
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