Nikolaidis, Ourania. Desert bee traits across an urbanizing landscape: are size or life-history traits predictable?. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-3awn-e873
DescriptionAs the world becomes more urbanized, key abiotic factors in cities differ strongly compared to those in adjacent wildlands. This is especially important in desert cities, which are rapidly urbanizing and understudied when compared to cities adjacent to temperate forests. While a taxonomic understanding of how this shift in abiotic factors affects ecological communities is important, a trait-based approach may be more comprehensive and reveal potential mechanisms of environmental filtering. Bees are particularly vulnerable to the effects of urbanization and land use change. In this study, I assess body size and life-history traits of bee in Albuquerque, New Mexico and an adjacent wildland desert. I found that bees at urban sites had 12% larger wing-bud distances and 28% larger body weights when compared to wildland sites. Life-history traits also varied across urban and wildland sites, with urban sites having 25% more bee species with specialized diets and 41% more bee species which were solitary. Overall, the urban sites had a distinct trait signature when compared to wildland sites, but one which also did not match the findings of previous studies. These findings suggest that further research is needed to understand how the rate of urbanization affects ecological communities.