UNIVERSITY PARK — A study documenting bees that are reported to occur in Pennsylvania has found the presence of 437 species, including 49 never before recorded in the state. Researchers said the resulting checklist of bees in the commonwealth also identifies species not native to North America and several native species that may be of conservation concern.
“Bees are a diverse and important group of insect pollinators,” said lead researcher Shelby Kilpatrick, doctoral candidate in entomology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “Overwhelming evidence of declines in managed and wild bee populations points to the need for a better understanding of bee diversity across different geographic areas. But despite extensive research, we still don’t know enough about the diversity and distribution of native bee species.”
Kilpatrick explained that this study builds on the first checklist of bees in Pennsylvania — published by other researchers in 2010 — which reported 372 species from more than 13,000 specimens located in 20 collections. Since the first checklist was published, thousands of additional specimens from the state have been collected and databased, new species have been described, and the taxonomic status, or scientific classification, of some species has changed.
The research team updated the 2010 checklist to reflect changes in taxonomy and reviewed more than 130,800 bee specimen and observation records in insect collections, online repositories, published studies and ongoing research projects from universities, museums and government agencies.
The data then were compared to the original checklist, resulting in a new total of 437 species, including 79 new state species records representing five of the six bee families in North America. Among these 79 were 49 species reported for the first time in Pennsylvania and another 30 that did not appear on the 2010 checklist. The researchers documented new species records for all but two of the state’s 67 counties.
Of the six bee families in the state, the one with the highest number of reported species, 118, was Apidae, which includes honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees, followed by Halictidae, commonly called sweat bees, with 110, and Andrenidae, known as mining bees, with 100. Megachilidae, comprised mostly of mason bees and leafcutter bees, accounted for 81 species; Colletidae, often referred to as cellophane bees and masked bees, had 24; and Melittidae, a family of rare, small bees that typically do not have common names, was represented by four species.
