Biodiversity Data Journal :
Single Taxon Treatment
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Corresponding author: Cory S. Sheffield (cory.sheffield@gov.sk.ca)
Academic editor: Michael Kuhlmann
Received: 31 Oct 2018 | Accepted: 13 Dec 2018 | Published: 10 Jan 2019
© 2019 Kirsten Palmier, Cory Sheffield
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:
Palmier K, Sheffield C (2019) First records of the Common Eastern Bumble Bee, Bombus impatiens Cresson (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Apinae, Bombini) from the Prairies Ecozone in Canada. Biodiversity Data Journal 7: e30953. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.7.e30953
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In Canada, the Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens Cresson) is native to southern Ontario and Quebec, but since being developed as a managed commercial pollinator, it has been exported to several other provinces for use in greenhouse and field crop settings. This has enabled this species to become established outside its natural range and it is now established in eastern Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island) and British Columbia. To date, the species has not been detected via field capture in the prairie provinces.
Here we report on recent captures of B. impatiens workers and males from south-eastern Alberta and suggest that these specimens escaped from nearby commercial greenhouses. The risk that the presence and looming establishment of this species has on native bumble bees in the Canadian prairies is discussed.
non-native species, species at risk, pathogen spillover, Prairies, pollination, conservation, COSEWIC
Non-native species pose one of the biggest threats to biodiversity due to their ability to outcompete native species for resources and the risks that they habour pathogens that can negatively impact local species (
In recent decades, both real and perceived needs for supplemental crop pollination have led to the development, evaluation and/or management of non-Apis species for management. In Canada, this list includes the Alfalfa Leafcutter Bee, Megachile rotundata (Fabricius) (Megachilidae) (e.g.
Bombus impatiens is a native North American species and common in north-eastern North America (
Field studies related to bumble bees in western Canada have been ongoing since 2013 (e.g.
The full dataset for Bombus impatiens specimens that were used in this study is archived with Canadansys (http://community.canadensys.net/) under resource title "Bombus impatiens Cresson (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Apinae, Bombini) from the Prairies Ecozone in Canada" and can be accessed using the following: https://doi.org/10.5886/hugvqu. This resource has also been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: b065a152-9f83-4944-9ea0-545ac0703c35.
Bombus impatiens
Syntypes 7♂♂. CANADA, USA - Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri [ANSP no. 6322, E. Norton].
Bombus (Pratobombus) impatiens var. deayi
Holotype ♀ [queen]. USA, Indiana, Bloomington, 3 May [or 5 March] 1938, by B. Kinsey [INHS].
Bombus impatiens is morphologically unique amongst other North American bumble bees in that both males and females have only the first metasomal tergum with pale pubescence, the remaining terga are entirely black (Fig.
In Canada, this species native range includes southern Ontario, Quebec and perhaps adjacent New Brunswick (
The documentation of worker and male Bombus impatiens within south-eastern Alberta (Figs
Several bumble bee species have declined in abundance in North America (
As a result of these declines, researchers have been exploring the emergence and spread of infectious diseases during interactions between commercially managed species and local wild populations (
There are many complicated relationships between pathogens and their hosts and the severity of disease depends on the host health and the virulence of the pathogen. All animals, including insects, are more susceptible to disease when stressed by adverse ecological pressures (
The presence and looming establishment of B. impatiens in south-eastern Alberta thus presents a great risk to native prairie bumble bees, particularly the three nationally assessed species that have undergone declines in other parts of Canada. Recently,
We thank Andrew Camerson, University of Regina, for helpful comments and gratefully acknowledge the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture and the Canada-Saskatchewan Growing Forward 2 bi-lateral agreement, delivered by the Agriculture Council of Saskatchewan, for funding and support in this project.