This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A team led by a Penn State professor and doctoral student has compiled a checklist documenting the bee species in Colombia—the first of its kind for any country in the Western Hemisphere. López-Uribe, the Nancy and John Steimer Professor of Agricultural Sciences and an associate professor of entomology, and Ruben D.
Martín-Rojas, a doctoral student in entomology, published their work—in collaboration with 44 partners representing 31 institutions—in the journal PeerJ. Located in northern South America, Colombia serves as a crucial land bridge between Central and South America. Tropical countries such as Colombia generally support the highest biodiversity for many groups of plants and animals—for example, the country is home to the largest number of species of birds, orchids, palms, freshwater fish and butterflies in the world.
However, the number of bee species does not follow the same pattern; the tropics generally have fewer species than subtropical areas. These patterns may be partially driven by huge gaps in data from tropical regions of the world, according to López-Uribe. "Bees are among the most important pollinators in both natural and agricultural ecosystems, but their patterns of diversity vary significantly between temperate regions, where they have been studied the most, and tropical regions, where we did our study," López-Uribe said.
"Species checklists may sound simple, but they are critical tools we have to document and conserve biodiversity by reporting changes over time." This bee checklist provides the most complete picture to date of bee biodiversity in Colombia. Previous counts have reported between 466 and 604 bee species; the new checklist by Martín-Rojas, López-Uribe and collaborators reported 738 species, including 246 newly recorded for the country. Of the 738 species, 20% are found only in Colombia.
Even so, the team estimated the true number of species in this country is closer to 1,035, highlighting that about 25% of the species remain unreported or undescribed. The team's findings revealed unique aspects of the variety of bees in the country, according to the researchers. In temperate regions, like North America and Europe, only 10% of the bees are social and 70% nest underground.
However, in Colombia, about 40% of bee species are social, and most nest above ground. In addition, the greatest bee species diversity was found in the Andean region, which exhibits a range of different climates, rather than the dry habitats usually home to high biodiversity in temperate regions. "Insect collections are invaluable archives of biodiversity," Martín-Rojas said.
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