Table 1.

Selected examples of colour benefits for the social hymenopterans (ants, bees, wasps)

Group	Species	Benefit	Colour trait	Defined method	Reference
Ants
Ponerinae	Diacamma sp.	Physical body protection associated with sexual colour dimorphism	Indices for cuticular pigmentation: black in females and yellowish-brown in males	Digital photographing photo analyses using adobe Photoshop CS5	(Miyazaki et al. 2014)
Formicinae	Cataglyphis bombycina	Thermoregulation	Silver tins produces by hairs	SEM and TEM imaging	(Willot et al. 2016)
Myrmicinae	Basiceros manni	Camouflage	Structural hairs and soil particles producing grey tints		(Hölldobler and Wilson 1986)
Bees
Apidae/Meliponini	Melipona costaricensis	Thermoregulation	Light vs. dark colour	Visual assessment	(Perreboom and Biesmeijer 2003)
	Cephalotrigona capitata
Apidae/Bombini	Bombus spp.	Thermoregulation	Light vs. dark colour	Visual assessment
			Seven colour classes and colour-pattern elements	Coding into colour-pattern elements	(Williams 2007)
	Bombus hortorum	Thermoregulation	Colour forms: light, medium-light and dark	Visual assessment	(Pekkarinen 1979)
	Bombus melanopygus	Mimetic diversification	Pigment-based colour	Solubility test and spectrophotometry	(Hines et al. 2017)
Wasps
Vespidae/Polistinae	Polistes dominula	Sexual dimorphism	Colour of the face (yellow/black)	Arttificial colour alteration	(Cappa et al. 2016)
	Poliistes simillimus	An assessment of rival quality in males	Proportion of black pigmentation on the head and yellow on the abdomen	Digital photographing photo analyses using Pro Plus 5.0	(de Souza et al. 2014)
	Polistes satan	Signal of relative fertility
			Areas of brown and black pigmentation on the head	Digital photographing quantitative measurements	(Tannure-Nascimento et al. 2008)
	Vespula vulgaris	Thermoregulation
Vespidae/Vespinae			Proportion of black pigmentation	Digital photographing quantitative measurements	(Badejo et al. 2018)
	Vespa orientalis	Thermoregulation	Yellow (xanthopterin)
				Mass spectrometry	(Plotkin et al. 2009)