Spillover of chalkbrood fungi to native solitary bee species from non-native congeners

Introduced, managed bees such as mason bees (genus Osmia) can confer significant pollination benefits to agricultural systems, but a risk of introducing non-native species into new ecosystems is the co-introduction of pathogens along with them. Pathogen spillover to wild, native bees may then drive native bee species declines.
This study examined prevalence of the chalkbrood-causing fungal genus Ascosphaera in the nests of both non-native and native mason bee species. We conducted large-scale trap-nesting and pan-trapping efforts across the Mid-Atlantic United States with community scientists. Using molecular methods, nests were screened for all known Ascosphaera species in which genetic sequences have been published. After finding Ascosphaera species first described in Asia, we compared their local prevalence with the local abundance of mason bees from Asia. Lastly, we compared the prevalence of co-introduced Ascosphaera species across sites with a variety of landcover profiles.
Result..., Please refer to the \"Methods\" section of the associated article, as well as Appendix S1 of the Supporting Information, where you will find all information related to methodogy and data processing., Please see the “Materials and Methods” section of the associated article, as well as Appendix S1 of the Supporting Information for details on how these data were collected and processed.
Data_file01.csv contains data used for main analyses relating to Ascosphaera sequencing and landcover analysis. Data_file02.csv contains all collection data from pan traps, as described in Methods section.
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