An updated understanding of Texas bumble bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) species presence and potential distributions in Texas, USA
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Entomology, Environmental Sciences
- Keywords
- pollinators, species decline, conservation, species distribution modeling, MaxEnt modeling, natural history collections, citizen science data, bumble bees
- Copyright
- © 2017 Beckham et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. An updated understanding of Texas bumble bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) species presence and potential distributions in Texas, USA. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2932v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2932v2
Abstract
Texas is the second largest state in the United States of America, and the largest state in the contiguous USA at nearly 700,000 sq. km. Several Texas bumble bee species have shown evidence of declines in portions of their continental ranges, and conservation initiatives targeting these species will be most effective if species distributions are well established. To date, statewide bumble bee distributions for Texas have been inferred primarily from specimen records housed in natural history collections. To improve upon these maps, and help inform conservation decisions, this research aimed to (1) update existing Texas bumble bee presence databases to include recent (2007-2016) data from citizen science repositories and targeted field studies, (2) model statewide species distributions of the most common bumble bee species in Texas using MaxEnt, and (3) identify conservation target areas for the state that are most likely to contain habitat suitable for multiple declining species. The resulting Texas bumble bee database is comprised of 3,580 records, to include previously compiled museum records dating from 1897, recent field survey data, and vetted records from citizen science repositories. These data yielded an updated state species list that includes 11 species, as well as species distribution models (SDMs) for the most common Texas bumble bee species, including two that have shown evidence of range-wide declines: B. fraternus (Smith, 1854) and B. pensylvanicus (DeGeer, 1773). Based on analyses of these models, we have identified conservation priority areas within the Texas Cross Timbers, Texas Blackland Prairies, and East Central Texas Plains ecoregions where suitable habitat for both B. fraternus and B. pensylvanicus are highly likely to co-occur.
Author Comment
The previous version was peer reviewed and updates have been made accordingly, including changes to figures and tables, as well as some parts of the text.
Supplemental Information
Results of Pearson's correlation analysis of Worldclim bioclimatic predictor variables
Pearson correlation coefficients (r) are shown in the table for each pair of predictor variables. Indices >0.8 are highlighted in red. Analysis was performed in ArcMap using the correlation and summary stats tool from the SDMtoolbox.