Hi Everyone!
It has been a while since I have last updated. We have been busy processing the specialist bees and identifying the remaining tricky bees. I also got around to making maps for the bowl survey project. Below are a few examples. We are working on the final write-up of the species from that project so people can then reference when I send out the final species reports of what was collected from each site. I appreciate the patience of everyone who has collected for us! It has been a long time coming, so we are doing our best to get things wrapped up.
Conferences:
We also had a few speaking engagements, with me presenting our research at the Ohio Wildlife Management Conference in Columbus in January.
We will also be speaking at the Ohio Natural History Conference next Saturday, the 25th of February down in Cincinnati, Ohio. We will also have multiple posters from the project at the conference. Info on that conference can be found here: https://ohiobiologicalsurvey.regfox.com/ohio-natural-history-conference-2023
Maps:
As promised, here are some of the maps that we generated. Lot of fun things and weird distributions! These, plus all the other maps will be included in our large overall report, which will be included with the final report. So expect more in the next few months.
For collectors, can you pick out your site on the map? There should be a dot that represents your sampling location, though they are large enough to not give away your exact location. I am so thankful to all that who participated that made such a good statewide coverage possible. We could not have done it without you!
All for now,
MaLisa
Have you noticed any bee species whose map distributions correspond to ecoregions, or major habitat regions? I’ve been surprised, looking at the Ohio Spider Survey data that relatively few reflect these bioregions. It is perplexing to me.
Yes! We have some weird distribution patterns for a few species! I haven’t had time to try to figure out why yet. I will be talking about a few in my talk next week. I also found it interesting that several of the species that had pretty clear in-state distributions were not as clear once we zoomed out and looked at other states (ie, a species showing up mostly in southern Ohio samples, but then found across most of eastern North America).
There were also a few that seemed to be more often found in either the glaciated or unglaciated portions of the state.
My perspective: Not so much. It is a little difficult to tell as many of our bee species are represented by few specimens. We’re hoping that the increased specimen diversity from the specialist bee survey and continued sampling under-sampled regions of the state will reveal interesting biogeographic patterns. It may be that most bee species are more widely distributed than the state of Ohio, making it the state-level scale inappropriate for identifying biogeographic patterns.
Thanks MaLisa!
Are you aware of any species that you expected but have not been collected? Maybe need to do more to see if extirpated in Ohio or extinct
(hopefully not!).
Are you aware of any work that will be done this summer? Might be good to keep the momentum going.
Thanks for all you do!!
Carl
Hi Carl, We expect many more species to occur in Ohio. I haven’t tried listing out which species that I definitely expect that are missing yet. Since we lack a lot of historical data, we can’t easily say something is extirpated if we didn’t know for sure it was here in the first place. There is upcoming work to go through the old historical collections across the state, but that is still a few years out.
They will be continuing the specialist bee project this summer! There will be someone else leading that project since I am transitioning to a different position, but we should have more information about summer sampling in the next few months.
These are great maps! Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see more.
I saw in the Guide to Specialist Bees of Ohio that Megachile addenda is listed as a specialist on Tephrosia virginiana, but this association is not listed on Jared Fowler’s website or anywhere else that I can find. In fact, this species is reported to be broadly polyphagous. I got as far as researching Tephrosia records to visit for bees this field season before I realized this! Do you have evidence of this oligolectic association, or does the Guide need to be updated?
Hi Pete,
The Specialist Bee guide pulled mostly from Jarred Fowler’s website, but also drew from a few email conversations at around that time. The M. addenda addition came from an excel that was supposedly created by Mike Arduser and shared in the beemomnitoring listserve by Peter Bernhardt in an email chain called “specialist bees of the Midwest”
The excel said it would use many different Fabaceae, but preferred Tephrosia. I copied the parts below.
Fabaceae Tephrosia late spring, early summer will use other legumes in addition to Tephrosia; in other parts of range uses cranberry flowers
Best wishes,
MaLisa