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Predicting Changes In Bee Assemblages Following State Transitions At North American Dryland Ecotones, Melanie R. Kazenel, Karen W. Wright, Julieta Bettinelli, Terry L. Griswold, Kenneth D. Whitney, Jennifer A. Rudgers

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Drylands worldwide are experiencing ecosystem state transitions: the expansion of some ecosystem types at the expense of others. Bees in drylands are particularly abundant and diverse, with potential for large compositional differences and seasonal turnover across ecotones. To better understand how future ecosystem state transitions may influence bees, we compared bee assemblages and their seasonality among sites at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (NM, USA) that represent three dryland ecosystem types (and two ecotones) of the southwestern U.S. (Plains grassland, Chihuahuan Desert grassland, and Chihuahuan Desert shrubland). Using passive traps, we caught bees during two-week intervals from March–October, 2002–2014. The …