A Survey of Bees in the University of Maryland Campus Area

Abstract

I sampled the wild bee community in the University of Maryland campus area in College Park, Maryland for one season and combined those data with that from previous years. The protocol was modified to significantly expand the geographic scope of the survey, covering a much wider spatial range of the campus. This combined data was used to assess population trends, best practices, and determine whether or not the expanded protocol offers advantages in capturing local wild bee diversity and/or analytical benefits over the previous survey. New data allowed for characterization of the local wild bee community and discerned a landscape driver of spatial variance in local diversity. Appropriateness of different geographic parameters was found to depend on survey goals.