Biodiversity Data Journal :
Single Taxon Treatment
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Corresponding author: Cory Sheffield (cory.sheffield@gov.sk.ca)
Academic editor: Paolo Biella
Received: 06 Apr 2023 | Accepted: 12 May 2023 | Published: 31 May 2023
© 2023 Cory Sheffield, Kirsten Palmier
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Sheffield C, Palmier KM (2023) Range expansion of Bombus (Pyrobombus) bimaculatus Cresson in Canada (Hymenoptera, Apidae). Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e104657. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e104657
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The two-spotted bumble bee, Bombus bimaculatus Cresson, 1863 (Hymenoptera, Apidae), is a common species in central North America, with few published records of this species in Canada west of Ontario or east of Quebec.
Based on recently collected specimens from Saskatchewan and confirmed records posted to iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/) in the past 10 years (i.e. since 2013), we provide evidence that this species has only recently expanded its range in Canada, westwards into the Prairies Ecozone (Manitoba, Saskatchewan) and east into the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island).
two-spotted Bumble Bee, iNaturalist, Prairies Ecozone, Atlantic Maritime Ecozone
Bumble bees are amongst the most familiar of insects and have been the subject of natural history investigation for centuries. There have been several historic treatments of bumble bee taxonomy and distribution in North America, but
Bombus bimaculatus Cresson was described in 1863 from material from Connecticut (
In the United States,
In the last decade, data from both active sampling and online databases have accumulated, suggesting that this species' range has been spreading in Canada and also westwards into the United States. Our purpose is to provide documentation that support that this species is now much more widespread in North America than recent treatments (i.e.
A database containing 34,802 [modified to remove observations without latitude and longitude coordinates and dates] North American occurrence records determined as Bombus bimaculatus was downloaded from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF); additional specimens from the dataset of
Additional records from Saskatchewan (see Materials below) from iNaturalist and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSKM), Regina, Saskatchewan were also included. The datasets were cleaned and harmonised using R (v.4.0.3,
The North American dataset used here for mapping was downloaded from
Bombus bimaculatus Cresson, 1863 -
Bombus ridingsii Cresson, 1878 -
Bremus bimaculatus var. ahenus Bequaert and Plath, 1925 -
Bremus bimaculatus var. arboreti Bequaert and Plath, 1925 -
Bombus bimaculatus is primarily a species of the eastern and central United States and Ontario and Quebec in Canada (
The recent spread of B. bimaculatus into western Canada, including Manitoba (
Other bumble bee species have also expanded their ranges, including B. vosnesenskii within southern British Columbia (
We gratefully acknowledge the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture and the Canada-Saskatchewan Growing Forward 2 bi-lateral agreement. We also thank the two reviewers for their helpful suggestions and those who contribute to the taxonomic and distributional knowledge of bumble bees on iNaturalist and other online data sources.