Andrena diagnosis

[David Cappaert]

Eventually there will be shortcuts to bee ID. Pocket barcode devices. Perfect keys. Serious government support for Bee Lab and others. In the meantime, it requires lots of time to learn the morphology and understand the literature. My general mission is to bend the learning curve, and encourage precision, just a little. 

As I began to learn about the taxonomy of Andrena, I struggled to understand the traits, so I created a Guide to the characters of the DiscoverLife Andrena key. I’ve now added a diagnosis page, where I document how I’ve evaluated those traits to support an ID. I think this is useful to other non-specialists; it has huge value to me personally. I’m not just saying this specimen is A. caerulea; I’m making explicit that this is A. caerulea and not nigrocaerulea because x, y, z. Another thing, maybe this is just me … I can often visualize traits better with large photos on my monitor than I can through the scope.

A couple of questions for you-all:

1. If you know Andrena better than I do, I’d love your take on how well I have understood the morphology, or explained the process of deduction. I’ll have made mistakes, and I am eager to learn from them.

2. What do you think of the diagnosis concept here, which could be done for other genera? 

David Cappaert
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