Fine‐scale bee species distribution models: Hotspots of richness and endemism in South Africa with species‐area comparisons

While global patterns of bee diversity have been modelled, our understanding of fine‐scale regional patterns is more limited, particularly for under‐sampled regions such as Africa. South Africa is among the exceptions on the African continent; its bee fauna (ca. 1253 species) has been well collected...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Insect conservation and diversity 2024-05, Vol.17 (3), p.474-487
Main Authors: Melin, Annalie, Beale, Colin M., Manning, John C., Colville, Jonathan F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apoidea
Biodiversity hot spots
endemic species
Fynbos
Geographical distribution
natural history collection data
Rainfall
range‐restricted species
species density
Species richness
weighted endemism
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Summary:While global patterns of bee diversity have been modelled, our understanding of fine‐scale regional patterns is more limited, particularly for under‐sampled regions such as Africa. South Africa is among the exceptions on the African continent; its bee fauna (ca. 1253 species) has been well collected and documented, including mass digitising of its natural history collections. It is a region with high floral diversity, high habitat heterogeneity and variable rainfall seasonality. Here, we combine a South African bee species distributional database (877 bee species) with a geospatial modelling approach to determine fine‐scale (~11 × 11 km grid cell resolution) hotspots of bee species richness, endemism and range‐restricted species. Our analyses, based on the probabilities of occurrence surfaces for each species across 108,803 two‐minute grid cells, reveal three bee hotspots of richness: Winter rainfall, Aseasonal rainfall and Early‐to‐late summer rainfall. These hotspots contain large numbers of endemic and geographically restricted taxa. Hotspots with particularly high bee diversity include the Fynbos, Succulent Karoo and Desert biomes; the latter showing 6–20 times more species per unit area than other biomes. Our results conform with global species‐area patterns: areas of higher‐than‐expected bee density are largely concentrated in Mediterranean and arid habitats. This study further enhances our knowledge in identifying regional and global hotspots of richness and endemism for a keystone group of insects and enabling these to be accounted for when setting conservation priorities. We used a comprehensive dataset of 877 South African bee species and geospatial modelling at a fine‐scale (~11 × 11 km) to determine species occurrence probabilities across 108,803 grid cells. Our analyses reveal three bee hotspots containing large numbers of species, endemics, and geographically restricted taxa: the Winter rainfall, Aseasonal rainfall and Early‐to‐late summer rainfall bee hotspots. After controlling for area size, higher than expected bee diversity is largely concentrated in Mediterranean and arid habitats, conforming with global patterns.
ISSN:1752-458X
1752-4598
DOI:10.1111/icad.12715