Bees of Colombia Paper

[Margarita Lopez-Uribe]

Hello Beeple,

I wanted to share a recent paper about the bees of Colombia with this group. It was published in PeerJ last week: https://peerj.com/articles/21684/

A few highlights. The study incorporated nearly 70,000 records, 70% of which came from local insect collections, with 18 institutions contributing data.  We reported 738, including 246 newly recorded for the country. The level of endemism is high, with 19% of the species reported only from Colombia (many of them in the Andean region). It was estimated that about 25% of the species remain unreported or undescribed.

In addition to revealing significant data gaps at the country level, I think one of the most interesting aspects of the study is that it captures how different tropical bee assemblages are from temperate ones. Unlike North America and Europe, where only around 10% of the bees are social and 70% nest underground, in Colombia, about 40% of bee species are social, and most nest above ground (~60%). 

Happy reading, and please reach out if you have any questions! 

Margarita

--

Margarita M. López-Uribe

Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers

Nancy and John Steimer Professor of Agricultural Sciences

Associate Professor 

Department of Entomology 

Pollinator Health Extension Specialist

Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

The Pennsylvania State University

website: http://www.lopezuribelab.com/

If you would like to set up a time to meet, here is my availability

"I embrace the rich spectrum of diversity within our community and across the globe, spanning differences in race, ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, gender, socio-economic background, accessibility, political ideologies, or any other distinction among individuals. It is my firm stance to unequivocally condemn acts of harassment or expressions of hate directed toward individuals or groups on the basis of these differences"