Records of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) new to both Georgia and Transcaucasia revealed by DNA barcoding

Abstract

Community composition of local pollinator assemblages, population dynamics and distribution patterns of many species are still poorly known, especially in little studied regions like Transcaucasia. We generated a total of 189 DNA barcodes from bees collected in 14 apple orchards in central and eastern Georgia to extend our knowledge of their distribution. Sequences (ca. 700 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene) were compared to the NCBI nucleotide database. Using a threshold of 98% similarity, analyses suggested that the sampled bees belong to 36 species of Apidae, Andrenidae, Halictidae, and Megachilidae. We report five bee species for the first time for Georgia: Andrena alfkenella Perkins, 1914, Halictus cochlearitarsis Dours, 1871, Nomada goodeniana (Kirby, 1802), Nomada ruficornis (Linnaeus, 1758) and Eucera nigrescens Pérez, 1879, four of which are also new for the Transcaucasia region. With these additions, the number of bee species known to occur in Georgia increases to 371.

Keywords:

• Apoidea
• Andrena
• Halictus
• Eucera
• Nomada

Acknowledgements

We thank Matthias Seidel, Anja Miertsch, Kerstin Gößel and Karoline Albig for their assistance in preparing samples for sequencing. We would like to thank Dr Fritz Gusenleitner (Biology Centre Linz, Austria) for the identification of Andrena alfkenella and A. carantonica, Dr Maximilian Schwarz (Ansfelden, Austria) for the identification of Nomada ruficornis, Dr Fatih Dikmen (Istanbul Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey) for the confirmation of Halictus cochlearitarsis and the editor for helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful to the Volkswagen Foundation for their support of the project “Identifying functional pollinator biodiversity and threats to its decline in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan“ (AZ: 86880) and “Functional pollinator biodiversity and their number, decline and threats in Georgia” supported by Sh. Rustaveli, Georgian National Science Foundation (DO/372/10-101/14).