Figure 1. Areas of theory for which wild bees are excellent systems at the population level. Two areas came up in our sample of recent papers in bee ecology (blue panels). Three other areas represent promising avenues for future research (yellow panels). I. Nutritional ecology: McAulay et al. 2020 used egg transfer experiments in mason beesOsmia spp. to examine factors influencing pollen specialization; II. Drivers of vital rates: Stuligross et al. 2020 used cage experiments to tease apart the combined effects of pesticide and resource availability on blue orchard bee Osmia lignaria demography; III. Voltinism and phenology: Colletes validus could be studied by locating nests and excavating brood cells to track life cycle timing; IV. Habitat selection: Eucera pruinosa could be studied by comparing nesting vs. foraging habitat; V. Movement ecology:Agapostemon virescens could be studied through spatially explicit mark-recapture of females.
Figure 2. Field-identifiable bees in eastern North America are spread across the bee tree of life, with 70 species from 28 genera across 5 families. Circle size is proportional to the number of species in each genus on our list. Phylogeny reproduced from Hedtke et al. 2013. Fig. 1