Bees of Maine, with a State Species Checklist

Abstract

The Penobscot Experimental Forest (PEF) in Maine has been the site of U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station (previously Northeastern Forest Experiment Station) research on northern conifer silviculture and ecology since 1950. Purchased by forest industry and leased to the Forest Service for long-term experimentation, the PEF was donated to the University of Maine Foundation in 1994. Since that time, the University and the Forest Service have worked in collaboration to advance the PEF as a site for research, demonstration, and education. This publication reports the history of the PEF during its first 60 years (1950 to 2010) and presents highlights of research accomplishments in silviculture, ecology, ecophysiology, nutrient cycling, botany, and other areas. Issues of data management and forest management planning are addressed. Also included is a bibliography of publications originating from research on the PEF, as well as recollections of a research forester stationed there for 30 years.More than half a century of work on the PEF has served as an important source of information for practitioners and policy makers in the Acadian Forest region of the northeastern United States and adjacent Canada, and informed the practice of silviculture nationally and internationally. Long-term consistency in treatment application and measurement; stand-level replication; and accessible, digital data, metadata, and records archives have facilitated hundreds of studies and made the PEF an invaluable and highly influential research site. The use of trade, firm, or corporation names in this publication is for the information and convenience of the reader. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Forest Service of any product or service to the exclusion of others that may be suitable. DEDICATIONSustaining long-term research at experimental forests depends on the foresight, commitment, and dedication of many people over decades. For more than 60 years, research on forest ecology and silviculture has been conducted on the Penobscot Experimental Forest. The men and women who do this work day in, day out, deserve much of the credit for the longevity and success of this endeavor. Among those who have contributed or are continuing to contribute to this ongoing research are scientists, professionals, and technicians with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and the University of Maine, who work in partnership to maintain the studies and the site. Over the years, hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Maine and elsewhere have worked side by side with others from the University and the Forest Service to carry out the research described in these pages.We thank all those who have been involved with the Penobscot Experimental Forest since 1950 collecting, managing, and analyzing data; implementing technology transfer; maintaining the forest and infrastructure; and providing administrati...

The bee fauna of an Atlantic coastal plain tidal marsh community in Southern New England, USA

“…Of the megachilids encountered, O. simillima, O. pumila, and M. mendica were shared among all four locations. Osmia simillima is noteworthy, as unlike the others, it is generally scarce and localized in the northeastern USA, with most records from coastal locations (Dibble et al, 2017;Schuh et al, 2010;Zarrillo et al, 2016;T.A. Zarrillo, [Napatree Point Conservation Area, Westerly, Rhode Island] unpubl.…”

Pollinator habitat: A cooperative project between the landfill industry and blueberry growers

“…During 2014 and 2015 we documented 30 bee species total, with 13 species at GMAS and 21 species at PTLF (Table 1). Eleven of these are somewhat unusual compared to historical data and our other recent collections (Dibble et al, 2017;Bushmann and Drummond, 2015;Drummond et al, 2017), though none are known to be truly rare and might be temporarily less abundant than they have been in the past. Half of the diversity was comprised of digger bees (Andrenidae) and sweat bees (Halictidae).…”

“…Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License landscapes (Dibble et al, 2017). They could be impacted by pesticides, natural enemies, diseases, habitat degradation (through invasive plant encroachment), habitat fragmentation, and climate change (Brown and Paxton, 2009;Goulson et al, 2015;Kerr et al, 2015).…”

“…The seed mix that we have tested in wild blueberry is described in a Maine Cooperative Extension factsheet (Venturini et al, 2015). Improving pollinator habitat has many benefits, not least of which is to improve pollinator services for crops, and to meet habitat requirements for the 268 species of native bees documented for Maine (Dibble et al, 2017). For most of these bee species, specific habitat requirements are incompletely known, but geographic areas with poor floral resources have low bee diversity and abundance (Groff et al, 2016;Dibble et al, 2018).…”

Geographic Biases in Bee Research Limits Understanding of Species Distribution and Response to Anthropogenic Disturbance

“…Bee research is often centered in areas surrounding universities and research stations, which results in a lack of information in areas beyond these research centers (see e.g., Scott et al, 2011;Gibbs et al, 2017a). In the USA, numerous state checklists have demonstrated a paucity of species occurrence records across many counties and larger regions within these states where certain bee species may be expected to occur (e.g., Donovall and VanEnglesdorp, 2010;Jean, 2010;Scott et al, 2011;Dibble et al, 2017;Gibbs et al, 2017a). Furthermore, published species inventories are lacking for most states in the USA, and available checklists are usually from the eastern half of country (e.g., Michigan, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine).…”