New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
Conservation ecology increasingly focuses on multi-species approaches to understand declines in abundance of entire biotic communities or assemblages. Often these approaches reveal that functional traits are related to conservation metrics such as extinction vulnerability. Additionally, we also expect genetic structure of populations to be affected by environmental change, as species’ traits are often shaped by their ecological relationships. Landscape genetics specifically addresses the influence of landscape features on genetic differentiation, and has recently sought general patterns across taxa. While insects are not frequently studied in this field, bees, with over 20,000 species worldwide, provide a diverse model for trait-based studies, displaying a wide range of functional traits related to behavior and physiology. We conducted a meta-analysis of over 100 papers in bee landscape genetics with the goal of generalizing patterns of genetic differentiation across functional traits of species, including size, sociality, diet, and nest-building behavior. As spatial extent is known to influence interpretation of genetic structure, we also explicitly determined the effect of spatial scale on genetic differentiation measures such as FST, GST, G’ST, and others. Patterns we predict to find include less genetic differentiation in larger-bodied, eusocial, and generalist species, and more differentiation in small, solitary, and specialist species. In addition to motivating hypothesis-driven research in landscape genetics, these results may also assist conservation efforts by identifying taxa likely to be sensitive to landscape changes.