AnthWest, occurrence records for wool carder bees of the genus Anthidium (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae, Anthidiini) in the Western Hemisphere

Authors: Griswold, Terry; GONZALEZ, VICTOR - Southwestern Oklahoma State University; Ikerd, Harold

Submitted to: ZooKeys
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/25/2014
Publication Date: 5/12/2014
Publication URL: https://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/60467
Citation: Griswold, T.L., Gonzalez, V., Ikerd, H.W. 2014. AnthWest, occurrence records for wool carder bees of the genus Anthidium (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae, Anthidiini) in the Western Hemisphere. ZooKeys. 408:31-49.

Interpretive Summary: Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants in most terrestrial environments yet for many species we still know little about their habits, nesting behaviors, and floral preferences. Often we do not even know the right name for a species, or it has never been named. This paper records all the information on the 92 species of carder bees (Anthidium) from the Americas that resulted from an intense study of these bees. A total of 21,352 records of carder bees are included in a dataset that is made available on-line. Each record represents a single, uniquely numbered specimen and includes the species name, sex, place collected, georeference for that place, elevation, date collected, and any biological information associated with the specimen. These records represent the distribution of carder bees from Alaska and northern Canada to southern Argentina and at elevations from sea level to 4700 meters. Records include dates as far back as 1886 up to the present. Knowledge of individual species varies greatly. There are 2403 records for one species, while seven species are known from only one specimen. The dataset will be regularly updated as additional records become available.

Technical Abstract: Bees are among the most important pollinators of flowering plants in most ecosystems. This paper describes a large dataset that represents one of the outcomes of a comprehensive, broadly comparative study on the diversity, biology, biogeography, and evolution of Anthidium Fabricius in the Western Hemisphere. In this dataset more than 21,352 adult occurrence records are documented for 92 species of Anthidium, including the invasive range of two adventive species from Eurasia, A. oblongatum (Illiger) and A. manicatum (Linnaeus). The geospatial coverage of the dataset extends from northern Canada and Alaska to southern Argentina, and from below sea level in Death Valley, California, USA, to 4700 m a.s.l. in Tucumán, Argentina. The majority of records in the dataset correspond to information recorded from individual specimens examined by the authors during this project and deposited in 49 biodiversity collections located in Europe, North and South America. A fraction (4.8%) of the occurrence records were taken from the literature, largely California records from a taxonomic treatment with some additional records for the two adventive species. The temporal scale of the dataset represents collection events recorded between 1886 and 2012. The dataset was developed by employing SQL server 2008 r2. For each specimen, the following information is generally provided: scientific name including identification qualifier when species status is uncertain (e.g. “Questionable Determination” for 0.4% of the specimens), sex, temporal and geospatial details, coordinates, data collector, host plants, associated organisms, name of identifier, taxonomic value (i.e., type specimen, voucher, etc.), and repository. For a small portion of the database records of bees associated with threatened or endangered plants (~ 0.08% of total records) as well as of specimens collected as part of unpublished biological inventories (~17%) georeferencing is presented only to nearest degree and the information on floral host, locality, elevation, month, and day has been withheld. This database is being constantly updated and can potentially be used in species distribution and niche modeling studies, as well as in assessments of pollinator status and pollination services. For native pollinators this large dataset of occurrence records is the first to be simultaneously developed during a species-level systematic study.