Spatiotemporal patterns of forest pollinator diversity across the southeastern United States

Efforts to understand how pollinating insect diversity is distributed across large geographic areas are rare despite the importance of such work for conserving regional diversity. We sought to relate the diversity of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae), and butterflies (Lepidoptera) to the ecoregion, landscape context, canopy openness, and forest composition across southeastern U.S. forests. We established 5-7 plots in each experimental forest. In each, we sampled pollinators monthly (March-September) using colored pan traps, and collected data on local forest characteristics. We used the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to quantify surrounding land cover at different spatial scales. Bee richness was negatively correlated with both the amount of conifer forest and the extent of wetlands in the surrounding landscape but was positively correlated with canopy openness. Hoverflies and butterflies were less sensitive to landscape context and stand conditions. Poll..., Pollinators (bees, butterflies, and hoverflies) were sampled using colored pan traps at 97 locations in 19 experimental forests across the southeastern United States. Data on canopy openness, tree composition, and basal area were collected at each plot. Landscape variables such as the amount of conifer forests and wetlands were based on National Land Cover Database data. This data file includes the five datasets that are used in the analysis. The \"combined_matrix\" includes species-level abundances by plot and was used in the community analysis (NMDS, adonis2, indicator species analysis). The file \"merged_data_for_analysis\" includes landscape and stand metrics as well as the richness of each pollinator taxa used in the diversity modeling. The last three datasets show the incidence of species by pollinator group used in the iNext analysis to compare gamma diversity among the three most-sampled ecoregions., , # Spatiotemporal patterns of forest pollinator diversity across the southeastern United States

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j0zpc86n6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j0zpc86n6)

There are five data files provided used in the analysis.

1\) The file \"combined_matrix\" includes species-level abundances by plot and was used in the community analysis (NMDS, adonis2, indicator species analysis). Column names that may not be obvious include:

* location: the plot name (experimentalforest_uniquenumber)
* ecoregion: the ecoregion
* EF: experimental forest
* canopy_openness: percent openness of forest canopy above each plot as described in the text
* weltand_500m: the percentage of the surrounding landscape within 500 m classified as wetland as described in the text
* conifer_500m: the percentage of the surrounding landscape within 500 m classified as conifer forest as described in the text
* basal_area: basal area of trees (cubic meters per ha) within 0.1 ha circular areas center...