Corresponding author: Gabriel Nève (
Academic editor: Paolo Biella
Many insect species have shown dramatic declines over the last decades, as a result of man-related environmental changes. Many species which were formerly widespread are now rare. To document this trend with evidence, old records of collected specimens are vital.
We provide here the data on 9752 bee (
There has been a dramatic decline in insect populations over the last 70 years, both in terms of abundance (
Amongst the various roles of insects in ecosystems, the pollination process is a key component, both in natural and man-made ecosystems (
The aim of the present paper is to document the collections of
Ultimately, the knowledge of past occurrences of bees will be of outmost importance for documenting the evolution of bee richness and their distribution in France and to set the basis for a future French Red List of bees which still does not exist to this day.
The aim of this publication is to make public the records of
All available data on the
The collectors of
On top of the data given on the original labels, we have added the Department (French administrative division) and the coordinates of the centre of the locality where each specimen was collected (columns
The specialists whose recent identifications we relied on are Holger Dathe (genus
The collections of
For all other specimens, the nomenclature was checked against the list of European bees used for the IUCN Red List (
As far as possible, the locality of origin of the specimen was identified and its latitude and longitude given by the website
The
41 and 51 Latitude; 10 and -5 Longitude.
Specimens of at least 552 species are present in the collections of the four surveyed natural history Museums. The specimens belong to the families
Rank | Scientific Name | |
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superfamily |
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family |
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family |
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family |
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family |
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family |
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family |
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The oldest specimens are those collected by Jean-Hubert Chabrier (1791-1884), hosted in MHNAix, which presumably come mostly from the first half of the nineteenth century, but do not bear any date information (
Creative Commons Public Domain Waiver (CC-Zero)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 Licence. All work derived from the present study should cite it appropriately, including the Museum where the material is held.
1
CSV (tab delimited values)
Darwin core, so that it could be transferred later into GBIF as the identifications are checked and more precise locations entered.
The whole dataset includes 9752
Column label | Column description |
---|---|
occurrenceID | Individual identification: combination of Museum name, collection identification, box number and specimen number within each box. |
basisOfRecord | The specific nature of the data record (i.e. PreservedSpecimen). |
eventDate | Event date in the format YYYY-MM-DD if the date is known to the day, or YYYY-MM if only the month and the year are known, or YYYY if only the year is known. |
Year | Year of capture if known. |
Month | Month of capture if known. |
Day | Day of capture if known. |
verbatimEventDate | Date of capture, if known, in format DD/MM/YYYY. Missing data are indicated by ? |
scientificName | Lowest taxonomic rank possible, usually the species name. If the species is unknown, the genus or family names are given. |
Kingdom | Kingdom (i.e. |
Phylum | Phylum (i.e. |
Class | Class (i.e. |
Order | Order (i.e. |
family | Family name. |
genus | Genus name. |
specificEpithet | Species epithet of the scientificName. |
sex | Male (M) or Female (F). |
taxonRank | Taxonomic rank of the most specific name in the scientificName. |
IdentifiedBy | Name of the entomologist who identified the specimen, if indicated by the label. |
dateIdentified | Year of identification, if known. |
identificationVerificationStatus | Whether (coded 1) or not (coded 0) the identification was recently (since 2009) checked. |
decimalLatitude | Geographic latitude (in decimal degrees) of the location. |
decimalLongitude | Geographic longitude (in decimal degrees) of the location. |
geodeticDatum | Coordinate system and set of reference points upon which the geographic coordinates are based (i.e. WGS 84). |
coordinateUncertaintyInMeters | Uncertainty in coordinates. As the coordinates are usually those of the locality of the record, uncertainty is in the range of 5000 m. |
Country | Country of capture, in French, as indicated by the label. |
countryCode | Two letter country code of the specimen origin. |
stateProvince | French departmental administrative division. In the case of non-French data, any relevant country administrative subdivision. |
locality | Location of capture, usually the locality. |
verbatimLocality | Any geographical indication on the label. |
InstitutionCode | Museum where the specimen is held. |
CatalogNumber | Box identifier within each Museum. |
occurrenceRemarks | Any ecological data or comment on the label |
recordedBy | Name of collector (i.e. |
OrganismQuantity | Number of individuals bearing the same label (usually 1). |
OrganismQuantityType | individuals. |
previousIdentifications | Species name originally given by the original collector, if different from scientificName. |
georeferencedBy | Identity of the person who added the Latitude and longitude data, usually Meunier, Jean-Yves. |
georeferenceProtocol | How the georeference was computed, i.e. from label data (verbatimLocality). |
georeferenceSources | Georeference code was inferred from geoportail.fr. |
georeferencedDate | Georeference work was mainly performed in 2021, with a few additions in 2023. |
language | The data set is mainly written in French, apart from column headings, which are in English |
CollectionCode | Identifier of collection within each Institution where specimens are held. |
locationRemarks | Several localities could not be identified unambiguously, this is indicated by “localité incertaine” in this field. |
Dried and pinned specimens.
MHNAix: Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle d’Aix en Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône)
MHNL: Musée des Confluences, Lyon (Rhône)
MHNM: Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône)
MDV: Muséum Départemental du Var, Toulon (Var)
Musée des Confluences, Lyon (MHNL)
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Marseille (MHNM)
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle d’Aix-en-Provence (MHNAix)
Muséum Départemental du Var, Toulon (MDV)
MHNL, MHNM, MHNAix, MDV.
MHNL: Harold Labrique: harold.labrique@museedesconfluences.fr
MHNM: Vincent Poncet: vponcet@marseille.fr
MHNAix: Yves Dutour: geologie_aix@yahoo.fr
MDV: Jérémy Migliore: jmigliore@var.fr
Gabriel Nève: gabriel.neve@imbe.fr
Altogether, the studied collections hold a total of 9752
Unfortunately, 5002 of the 9255 French specimens do not bear a date of collection. For some of these, the time frame was guessed using the biographic data of the collectors. If we hypothesise that the specimens from the Chabrier Collection were collected during the first half of the 19th century and the ones from Côte Collection during the first half of the 20th century, most of the specimens were collected since 1900, equally divided (about 1500 specimens) in each of the time spans 1900-1949, 1950-1999 and 2000-2018 (Fig.
The temporal distribution of the data according to the IUCN criteria of the European fauna (Nieto et al. 2014) shows that most specimens belonging to endangered species were collected either in the years 1901-1950, or in the years 2000-2018 (Fig.
From the recently checked 1301
We wish to thank the staff at the four Museums who made the recording of specimens in their care possible. Holger Dathe, Robert Fonfria, David Genoud, Michael Kuhlmann, Gérard Le Goff, Hugues Mouret, Alain Pauly, Stephan Risch and Erwin Scheuchl identified the specimens in MDV. Robert Mesibov gave valuable advice for formatting the data into GBIF format.
Study design: BG, data input: JYM, identification of
Geographical distribution of the surveyed specimens in France, according to the holding Museums.
Periods of captures of surveyed
Distributions of
Period of capture according to the European IUCN criteria for all surveyed
Number of recorded French
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle d'Aix-en-Provence | 255 | 243 | 153 | 0 |
|
Musée des Confluences (Lyon) | 8790 | 8312 | 8239 | 2646 |
|
Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Marseille | 612 | 606 | 589 | 0 |
|
Muséum Départemental du Var (Toulon) | 95 | 95 | 95 | 95 |
|
9752 | 9256 | 9076 | 2741 |
Numbers of French
Departments | N |
Ain | 554 |
Aisne | 1 |
Allier | 4 |
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence | 29 |
Alpes-Maritimes | 16 |
Ardèche | 80 |
Ariège | 28 |
Aude | 5 |
Aveyron | 4 |
Bouches-du-Rhône | 874 |
Cantal | 5 |
Charente | 4 |
Charente-Maritime | 10 |
Cher | 1 |
Corrèze | 24 |
Corse | 14 |
Corse-du-Sud | 10 |
Doubs | 86 |
Drôme | 296 |
Essonne | 3 |
Finistère | 18 |
Gard | 73 |
Gers | 14 |
Gironde | 29 |
Guyane française | 1 |
Haute-Corse | 31 |
Haute-Garonne | 15 |
Haute-Loire | 308 |
Haute-Saône | 64 |
Haute-Savoie | 71 |
Hautes-Alpes | 36 |
Hautes-Pyrénées | 8 |
Hérault | 76 |
Indre | 2 |
Isère | 219 |
Jura | 155 |
Landes | 3 |
Loire | 1141 |
Loiret | 2 |
Lozère | 2 |
Manche | 1 |
Morbihan | 5 |
Moselle | 1 |
Pas-de-Calais | 1 |
Puy-de-Dôme | 11 |
Pyrénées-Atlantiques | 6 |
Pyrénées-Orientales | 23 |
Rhône | 4253 |
Saône-et-Loire | 1 |
Sarthe | 41 |
Savoie | 114 |
Seine-et-Marne | 1 |
Seine-Maritime | 2 |
Somme | 8 |
Tarn-et-Garonne | 2 |
Territoire de Belfort | 11 |
Var | 243 |
Vaucluse | 63 |
Vendée | 7 |
Vosges | 6 |
Yvelines | 1 |
Unknown | 139 |
TOTAL | 9256 |
Number of specimens per genus for all French specimens.
Genus | Number of specimens |
|
4 |
|
4 |
|
1056 |
|
6 |
|
124 |
|
193 |
|
15 |
|
19 |
|
1376 |
|
85 |
|
49 |
|
73 |
|
138 |
|
11 |
|
3 |
|
2 |
|
43 |
|
80 |
|
390 |
|
4 |
|
19 |
|
94 |
|
2 |
|
227 |
|
16 |
|
2 |
|
137 |
|
29 |
|
8 |
|
521 |
|
188 |
|
76 |
|
6 |
|
13 |
|
205 |
|
27 |
|
10 |
|
2 |
|
3 |
|
2 |
|
74 |
Species with more than 50 French specimens.
Species | Number of specimens |
|
161 |
|
141 |
|
141 |
|
92 |
|
79 |
|
75 |
|
62 |
|
56 |
|
53 |
|
52 |
Numbers of French specimens of species classified as endangered in Europe, according to time-frames and Museums where held.
Time frame | Species | Museum | Number of specimens |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 2 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 2 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNM | 5 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
2001-2018 |
|
MDV | 2 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 2 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 1 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 8 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 4 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 16 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 7 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 3 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 6 |
Total | 70 |
Numbers of French specimens of species classified as vulnerable in Europe, according to time-frames and Museums where held.
Time frame | Species | Museum | Number of specimens |
1801-1850 |
|
MHNAix | 2 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
1901-1950 |
|
MHNL | 10 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 2 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 4 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
1951-2000 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 6 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 1 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
2001-2018 |
|
MHNL | 3 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 15 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 3 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 6 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 12 |
unknown |
|
MHNL | 1 |
Total | 78 |