The bees of Lebanon (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila)

Abstract

The study of wild bees has markedly increased in recent years due to their importance as pollinators of crops and wild plants, and this interest has been accentuated by increasing evidence of global declines in their abundance and species richness. Though best studied in Europe and North America, knowledge on the current state of wild bees is scarce in regions where they are particularly diversified, such as the Mediterranean basin. The eastern Mediterranean country of Lebanon, located at the heart of the Levant in a biodiversity hotspot, is particularly poorly studied. The aim of this paper is to produce a first annotated checklist of the wild bees of Lebanon from new and museum collections, literature records, and verified occurrences from online databases. The present list totals 573 species for Lebanon of which 289 are reported for the first time, but the estimated diversity is likely to be closer to 700. Preliminary information on local distributions and flower records are also presented. The local species assemblages indicate affinities with montane habitats of the Mediterranean and Anatolia and the semi-arid habitats of the Levant and north Africa. This study also encourages further research on local wild bee faunas and the use of this knowledge for conservation purposes.

First checklist of halictid bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Anthophila, Halictidae) of Tunisia

“…Gabes (Ebmer, 1993(Ebmer, , 1984(Ebmer, , 1999. which has 144 species in 12 genera (Lhomme et al, 2020) and it is slightly more diversified compared to Lebanese fauna having only 98 species in eight genera (Boustani et al, 2021). Like the Moroccan fauna, in Tunisia, the genus Lasioglossum Curtis, 1833 is the most diverse genus with 51 species followed by Halictus Latreille, 1804 and Sphecodes Latreille, 1804 with 21 and 16 species respectively.…”

Are Bumblebees Relevant Models for Understanding Wild Bee Decline?

“…Except for a few species, bumblebees still constitute a mostly cold-adapted lineage to day. This trait leads to key difference in their distribution ranges compared to most other bees, as bumblebee diversity worldwide peaks in high altitudes, far from the actual hotspots of solitary bee diversity in Mediterranean areas (Michener, 2007;Orr et al, 2020;Boustani et al, 2021;Wood et al, 2021a) where Bombus are poorly represented (Rasmont et al, 2021). This contrast can be explained by the origin of bees themselves, likely to have radiated from the xeric regions of the highly seasonal interior of the old continent of Gondwanaland (Michener, 2007).…”