Article

Great Lakes Pollinators

By Jessica Rykken, Ann Rodman, Sam Droege, and Ralph Grundel

The lakeshore dune site at Pictured Rocks (Mich.) on Lake Superior. NPS photo.
The lakeshore dune site at Pictured Rocks (Mich.) on Lake Superior.

NPS photo

Around the western Great Lakes, bees were sampled at five parks (see map) in paired foredune and inland habitats. The two habitats were compared within and between parks (photo, at left). Dune ecosystems are often restricted to a narrow zone near the Great Lakes, and we might expect that species inhabiting such restricted habitats are more vulnerable to extirpation from changing climate than bees in more common inland habitats.

Although parks in this region are separated by up to 715 km (444 mi), a site in one of the habitat types (dune or inland) shared more bee species with like habitats across parks than it did with its paired (different) habitat within the same park (fig. 1). The marked difference between dune and inland bee communities suggests that forces of environmental change differentially affecting habitat types across this region will act on different sets of pollinators (fig. 2).


Map of Great Lakes locations where bee, Perdita swenki was found (left), graph of similarity in bee species across habitats (right top), and comparison of bee species richness in different habitats (right bottom).

About the authors

Jessica Rykken (jrykken@oeb.harvard.edu) is an associate with the Farrell Lab, Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ann Rodman (ann_rodman@nps.gov) is branch chief for Physical Resources and Climate Science at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

Sam Droege (sdroege @usgs.gov) is a research wildlife biologist with the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland.

Ralph Grundel (rgrundel@usgs.gov) is a research ecologist with the USGS Great Lakes Science Center in Porter, Indiana.

Last updated: July 7, 2022