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- Title
Predicting the distribution range of a recently described, habitat specialist bee.
- Authors
Silva, Daniel P.; Hall, H. Glenn; Ascher, John S.
- Abstract
The Wallacean shortfall—lack of adequate knowledge of a species' distribution in the geographic space—hinders practical actions towards species conservation, and such severe data deficit is ubiquitous when dealing with insect species. Considering the effects of human activities on Earth, especially in the last 50 years, proper delimitation of species distributions is of utmost importance for their conservation, but this is challenging when occurrence data for a species are limited. Here, we present suitable areas of occurrence for a recently-described specialist bee in the Southeastern United States (Colletes ultravalidus Hall and Ascher), modeled with presence-only methods that are robust to small number of occurrence points. Incorporation of new citizen science data points derived from images submitted online for identification enhanced the species distribution model which, in turn, validated the new sites as suitable for the species. Consideration of absence points, i.e. sites where the species was not recorded despite intensive surveys for Colletes and other specialist bees, resulted in more precise predications that can inform future searches for this bee. This study exemplifies how citizen-science projects may contribute to improving understanding of species biogeographic ranges and thus to overcoming the Wallacean shortfall. The need for critical evaluation prior to and after modeling of the occurrences obtained by non-specialists are discussed.
- Subjects
UNITED States; SPECIES distribution; WILDLIFE conservation; BEES; POLLINATION by bees; HABITATS; CITIZEN science
- Publication
Journal of Insect Conservation, 2020, Vol 24, Issue 4, p671
- ISSN
1366-638X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10841-020-00241-3