Faculty note: Wolf on bees

Prof. Amy Wolf of Natural and Applied Sciences and Dr. John Ascher of the American Museum of Natural History in New York have published a major paper entitled “Bees of Wisconsin (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila)” in the current issue of The Great Lakes Entomologist.  This marks the first comprehensive survey of Wisconsin’s bee fauna since 1935, when S. Graenicher of the Milwaukee Public Museum published one of North America’s most significant regional studies of native bees.  Research behind Wolf and Ascher’s paper was funded in part by the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, UW-Green Bay’s Research Council, and the Natural and Applied Sciences unit.  During the past four years Wolf and her students have compiled one of the state’s three largest bee collections, and her research for the paper included visits to all of the state’s historical museum bee collections.  How many species of bees occur in our state?  According to Wolf and Ascher, 388 and counting.  One species collected by Wolf was not previously known from the entire U.S. and at least nine other species had never previously been documented from Wisconsin or nearby states.