Wild and managed bees are well documented as effective pollinators of global crops of economic importance. However, the contributions by pollinators other than bees have been little explored despite their potential to contribute to crop production and stability in the face of environmental change. Non-bee pollinators include flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, wasps, ants, birds, and bats, among others. Here we focus on non-bee insects and synthesize 39 field studies from five continents that directly measured the crop pollination services provided by non-bees, honey bees, and other bees to compare the relative contributions of these taxa. Non-bees performed 25-50% of the total number of flower visits. Although non-bees were less effective pollinators than bees per flower visit, they made more visits; thus these two factors compensated for each other, resulting in pollination services rendered by non-bees that were similar to those provided by bees. In the subset of studies that measured fruit set, fruit set increased with non-bee insect visits independently of bee visitation rates, indicating that non-bee insects provide a unique benefit that is not provided by bees. We also show that non-bee insects are not as reliant as bees on the presence of remnant natural or seminatural habitat in the surrounding landscape. These results strongly suggest that non-bee insect pollinators play a significant role in global crop production and respond differently than bees to landscape structure, probably making their crop pollination services more robust to changes in land use. Non-bee insects provide a valuable service and provide potential insurance against bee population declines.unmanaged pollinator | insect pollinator | fly | bee | beetle

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Wolbachia is a genus of bacterial endosymbionts that impacts the breeding systems of their hosts. Wolbachia can confuse the patterns of mitochondrial variation, including DNA barcodes, because it influences the pathways through which mitochondria are inherited. We examined the extent to which these endosymbionts are detected in routine DNA barcoding, assessed their impact upon the insect sequence divergence and identification accuracy, and considered the variation present in Wolbachia COI. Using both standard PCR assays (Wolbachia surface coding protein – wsp), and bacterial COI fragments we found evidence of Wolbachia in insect total genomic extracts created for DNA barcoding library construction. When >2 million insect COI trace files were examined on the Barcode of Life Datasystem (BOLD) Wolbachia COI was present in 0.16% of the cases. It is possible to generate Wolbachia COI using standard insect primers; however, that amplicon was never confused with the COI of the host. Wolbachia alleles recovered were predominantly Supergroup A and were broadly distributed geographically and phylogenetically. We conclude that the presence of the Wolbachia DNA in total genomic extracts made from insects is unlikely to compromise the accuracy of the DNA barcode library; in fact, the ability to query this DNA library (the database and the extracts) for endosymbionts is one of the ancillary benefits of such a large scale endeavor – for which we provide several examples. It is our conclusion that regular assays for Wolbachia presence and type can, and should, be adopted by large scale insect barcoding initiatives. While COI is one of the five multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) genes used for categorizing Wolbachia, there is limited overlap with the eukaryotic DNA barcode region.

A small but vocal community of critics has questioned the epistemological value of DNA barcoding by suggesting that either it 'cannot work' for the identification or discovery of species or that it ignores the 'richness' inherent in traditional approaches. We re-examine these arguments through a comparison of DNA barcoding and morphological taxonomy in terms of their accuracy and diversity of characters employed. We conclude that morphology often does not work and that it is often nowhere near as 'rich' as has been argued. Morphology is particularly poor in numerous important situations, such as the association of larvae with adults and discrimination among cryptic species. The vehemence of some of the criticisms is surprising given that morphology alone is known to be inadequate to the task of specieslevel identification in many instances.

DNA barcoding has been evaluated for many animal taxa and is now advocated as a reliable and rapid means for species-level identification. The coming-to-light of this identification tool is timely as we are now facing perhaps the greatest rate of species loss in recent millennia. This study contributes to an ever-increasing number of published accounts of DNA barcoding successfully and accurately distinguishing animal taxa, in this instance, the bee fauna of Nova Scotia, Canada. Most members of this well-known fauna were resolved with particular clarity; the average intraspecific divergence was less than 0.5%, and COI sequences from over 75% of the province's species are now in the Barcodes of Life Data System. DNA barcoding also revealed some surprises within this fauna, including the possible recognition of two undescribed genetically unique species, one in the genus Ceratina (subgenus Zadontomerus), the second in the genus Andrena (subgenus Larandrena); both are presently receiving further taxonomic study. In addition, DNA barcoding has allowed sex-associations among two pairs of cleptoparasitic species. The resulting utility of DNA barcoding for ecological studies of bee communities is discussed.

International audienceMany factors affect bee diversity and abundance, and knowledge of these is crucial for maintaining healthy bee communities. However, there are few means to fully evaluate the status of bee communities; most are based on monitoring species richness and abundance and do not consider the diverse life histories of bees. We propose that functional diversity of bee communities offers a more consistent means of evaluation and suggest that cleptoparasitic bees in particular show much promise as indicator taxa. Cleptoparasitic bees play a stabilising role within bee communities. They represent the apex of bee communities and are the first guild to respond to disturbances, are easily distinguished as such and are diverse enough to be representative of entire bee communities. The diversity and abundance of cleptoparasites in relation to all bees is indicative of the status of the total bee community, and monitoring them should form an integral part of assessing bee communities

Climate change is shifting the environmental cues that determine the phenology of interacting species. Plant-pollinator systems may be susceptible to temporal mismatch if bees and flowering plants differ in their phenological responses to warming temperatures. While the cues that trigger flowering are well-understood, little is known about what determines bee phenology. Using generalised additive models, we analyzed time-series data representing 67 bee species collected over 9 years in the Colorado Rocky Mountains to perform the first community-wide quantification of the drivers of bee phenology. Bee emergence was sensitive to climatic variation, advancing with earlier snowmelt timing, whereas later phenophases were best explained by functional traits including overwintering stage and nest location. Comparison of these findings to a long-term flower study showed that bee phenology is less sensitive than flower phenology to climatic variation, indicating potential for reduced synchrony of flowers and pollinators under climate change.

DNA barcoding is used to verify characters to morphologically differentiate genetically distinct species of eastern North American small carpenter bees, Ceratina. Here we reveal that the common eastern North American species, Ceratina dupla s. l., is actually three separate species based on fixed differences in DNA barcode sequences and morphological characters. This study adds a new species, C. mikmaqi Rehan & Sheffield, to the Ceratina dupla species-group of eastern North America, and raises another form, C. floridana formerly C. dupla floridana, to full species. Temporal niche partitioning between C. dupla and C. mikmaqi and geographic isolation of C. floridana further support the division of the C. dupla s. l. group into three species. A diagnosis and description of the new species are provided, as is a key for eastern North American species of Ceratina.