Bumble bee fauna of Palouse Prairie: survey of native bee pollinators in a fragmented ecosystem

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Bumble bees, Bombus Latreille (Hymenoptera: Apidae:), are dominant pollinators in the northern hemisphere, providing important pollination services for commercial crops and innumerable wild plants. Nationwide declines in several bumble bee species and habitat losses in multiple ecosystems have raised concerns about conservation of this important group. In many regions, such as the Palouse Prairie, relatively little is known about bumble bee communities, despite their critical ecosystem functions. Pitfall trap surveys for ground beetles in Palouse Prairie remnants conducted in 2002–2003 contained considerable by-catch of bumble bees. The effects of landscape context, remnant features, year, and season on bumble bee community composition were examined. Additionally, bees captured in 2002–2003 were compared with historic records for the region to assess changes in the presence of individual species. Ten species of bumble bee were captured, representing the majority of the species historically known from the region. Few detectable differences in bumble bee abundances were found among remnants. Community composition differed appreciably, however, based on season, landscape context, and elevation, resulting in different bee assemblages between western, low-lying remnants and eastern, higher-elevation remnants. The results suggest that conservation of the still species-rich bumble bee fauna should take into account variability among prairie remnants, and further work is required to adequately explain bumble bee habitat associations on the Palouse.

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ELECTRONIC FILE - Zoology: Invertebrates

Note: The publisher (online) gives suggested citation to the online article number (article is open access) rather than to the print issue and page numbers. (I couldn't find page numbers to the print version, which would be in issue no. 1, so publisher suggestion informs this Biblio record, and what we have is a PDF from online.)

SWAP (2/19/2016) citation:
Hatten TD, Looney C, Strange JP, Bosque–Pérez NA. 2013. Bumble bee fauna of Palouse Prairie: survey of native bee pollinators in a fragmented ecosystem. [accessed 2015 Jun 1]; Journal of Insect Science. 13:art26. http://jinsectscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/jis/13/1/26.full.pdf