Colombia bee checklist records 738 species, including 246 new national records

Colombia’s documented bee inventory has reached 738 species, including 246 newly recorded for the country, according to a Penn State research announcement carried by Phys.org on October 8. The expanded checklist provides a fuller account of the country’s pollinators, although the higher tally does not establish that bee populations have grown.

Penn State entomologist Margarita M. López-Uribe and doctoral student Ruben D. Martín-Rojas led the work with 44 partners representing 31 institutions. The university says the study was published in PeerJ. Its findings describe an expanded record of species present in Colombia, rather than a measurement of how many individual bees are alive.

What the 246 new national records mean

Earlier counts cited in the announcement ranged from 466 to 604 species. The new national records concern species newly documented for Colombia; the announcement does not establish that the researchers discovered or named 246 species previously unknown to science. That distinction matters when interpreting what has changed.

The figures also cannot be treated as a simple addition to the highest previous count. The announcement does not explain how taxonomic revisions, exclusions or differences in the scope of earlier inventories reconcile those totals with the new list. It reports an updated inventory, without supplying that full accounting.

Museum collections supplied most checklist records

Penn State says the work drew on 18 Colombian insect collections, combining specimen information with public repositories and taxonomic literature. “Insect collections are invaluable archives of biodiversity,” Martín-Rojas said. He reported that local collections contributed 70% of the records in the checklist.

López-Uribe says gaps in tropical records may partly explain apparent geographic patterns in bee diversity. Although tropical countries support exceptional diversity in many groups of plants and animals, the announcement describes fewer documented bee species in tropical than subtropical areas. Incomplete documentation is one possible contributor to that pattern, rather than a resolved explanation.

“Species checklists may sound simple, but they are critical tools we have to document and conserve biodiversity by reporting changes over time,” López-Uribe said in the Phys.org account. Establishing which species have been recorded creates a reference for subsequent research; it does not itself demonstrate conservation success.

Colombia’s recorded bee diversity differs from temperate regions

The researchers report that about 40% of Colombian bee species are social and that most nest above ground. Their comparison describes bees in temperate regions, including North America and Europe, as approximately 10% social, with 70% nesting underground. These are attributed findings from the announcement.

The team also reports the greatest recorded bee diversity in the Andean region, which has varied climates. The announcement does not establish whether sampling effort was equivalent across Colombian regions. The regional finding therefore needs to be read alongside the researchers’ warning about gaps in documentation.

Earlier stingless-bee research shows why records need checking

An independently produced Humboldt Institute inventory offers a narrower precedent. Its November 2024 version recognizes 131 species and one subspecies of stingless bees in Colombia. It covers one group of bees, rather than the whole national bee fauna, and does not independently confirm the new checklist’s total.

That inventory flagged reports of 11 species as possible distribution errors. Its authors checked scientific names against Catalogue of Life to distinguish accepted names from synonyms, and compared distribution information from publications and biodiversity databases. The work illustrates why compiling a list involves evaluating records as well as collecting them.

The Humboldt records also include geographic information, elevation ranges inferred from publications and published information about species used in stingless-bee keeping. Those details connect an inventory to questions about where bees occur and how people manage them, without showing that a new checklist has improved yields or bee health.

What remains unresolved

Penn State says the collaboration now operates as Proyecto Abejas de Colombia, linking museums, universities and researchers. Its announcement gives no timetable for the next inventory update. It also does not demonstrate population recovery or conservation outcomes caused by the expanded checklist.