US Geological Survey: Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit Chesapeake Watershed CESU Grant

Identification of bees using morphological characteristics can be problematic for certain species due to misinterpretation of descriptions and/or the presence of large phenotypic differences within a species. Males and females of all bee species are strongly differentiated morphologically, so much so that identification keys are separate for each sex. Commonly, species descriptions are based on one only a few characteristics and, at times, separation of closely allied species is morphological difficult to impossible for one sex. Underlying this apparent morphological issue is the twin problem that descriptions that separate species may be based not on separating true species but the separation of phenotypical variants of the same species. To overcome these limitations, DNA-based methods (barcoding) using the cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) of mitochondrial DNA and other loci have been developed to aid species identification and discovery.