Checklist, Version 3. In An Annotated Checklist of the Bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) of San Diego County, California

The Mediterranean and desert regions of Southern California include some of the most diverse bee faunas (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) in the world. Due to human development, large portions of Mediterranean scrub and desert ecosystems in Southern California have been destroyed or profoundly degraded. This trend of habitat destruction and degradation is expected to continue as population pressures continue to grow and as Earth’s climate changes. This ongoing inventory project seeks to document all the bee species that occur within the bounds of San Diego County. Our aim is to not only make this information available for conservation managers and scientists, but also to provide a foundation for future efforts to investigate how bee diversity is affected by anthropogenic climate change in San Diego.

This is a list of all described (or confirmed undescribed) bee species currently known by the researchers to occur in San Diego County. Species records in this checklist are obtained from diverse sources such as museum collections, primary literature (such as original species descriptions and taxonomic revisions), multi-institutional databases (such as discoverlife.org), citizen-science photography websites (such as BugGuide.net and iNaturalist.org), and recent surveys in the natural habitats of San Diego. This list will be updated as researchers continue to database primary literature and as new species are recorded via ongoing surveys.

We are still amid working with curators and taxonomic experts to verify data sources and identifications for a number of the bee species in our list. Therefore, please be advised that this list does not represent a complete, error-free inventory of the bee species currently occurring in San Diego County.