Title

Bees and their floral visits in Sapporo in 1979 and 1989

Author

Takeshi Matsumura¹,Shoko Nakamura², Hisatomo Taki^2*

¹658-72 Sankucho, Nasushiobara, Tochigi 329-2745, Japan

¹Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan

Correspondence

Hisatomo Taki
Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan
E-mail: htaki@affrc.go.jp
Tel.: +81 29 829-8250

Abstract

Bees are an important faunal group and function as pollinators for various flowering plants. The diversity and abundance of bees have decreased in some parts of the world, which has led to fears about habitat degradation and a pollination crisis worldwide. Therefore, establishing long-term monitoring systems and making past data available widely are important for understanding bees and their ecosystem function, and to enable evidence-based action for the conservation and restoration of bees and their ecosystem function. Decades ago, a group led by Shoichi F Sakagami established a systematic method of bee surveys and conducted surveys at multiple places in Japan. In Sapporo, intensive bee surveys involving sampling bees and recording the flowers that were visited by the bees from April to September were conducted systematically at the campus and Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University in 1979 and 1989. These involved sampling bees and recording the flowers that were visited by the bees from April to September. A total of 12,900 bee specimens were represented by Andrenidae, Apidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, Megachilidae and Melittidae. Here, we have converted the information to digital data by archiving the data on the bee species and the plant species that the bees visited in 1979 and 1989 at two sites at Hokkaido University, in Sapporo, Japan.

Keywords

Andrenidae, Anthophila, Apidae, Apiformes, Apoidea, Colletidae, Halictidae, Hymenoptera, Megachilidae, Melittidae

1 | INTRODUCTION

Bees are a fundamental faunal group that perform an important ecosystem function as pollinators for various flowering plants (Michener 2007). The diversity and abundance of bees have decreased in some parts of the world, which has raised fears about habitat degradation and a worldwide pollination crisis (Potts et al. 2016). Therefore, establishing long-term monitoring systems and making past data available widely are important for understanding bees and their ecosystem function, and to enable evidence-based action for the conservation and restoration of bees and their ecosystem function.

Decades ago, a group led by Shoichi F Sakagami established a systematic method of bee surveys and conducted surveys at multiple places in Japan (Sakagami et al. 1974). In Sapporo, intensive bee surveys involving sampling bees and recording the flowers that were visited by the bees from April to September were conducted systematically at the campus and Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University in 1959, 1969, 1979, and 1989. The primary aim of these surveys was to get information on the annual cycles of the species of local bees as a basis for their comparative bionomics; an additional aim was expanded to analyze the relative abundance and phenology of the bee fauna quantitatively at Hokkaido University (Sakagami & Fukuda 1973). Although the results from 1959 have been already reported and published (Sakagami & Fukuda 1973), the rest of the bee samples remained unidentified and unpublished and kept in the laboratory. It would be a major scientific loss to lose the precious bee specimens and flower records collected with such great effort.

Here, we have tried to identify the bee species and digitize the data. This paper archives the data on the bee species and the plant species that the bees visited in 1979 and 1989 at two places at Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. All of the specimens from 1979 and 1989 had been pinned, labeled, and kept in the laboratory, unlike samples form 1969 which remain in ethanol.

2 | DATA DESCRIPTION

2.1 Identifier

ERDP-2020-01

2.2 Contributor

A. Dataset owner

Takeshi Matsumura
Address: 658-72 Sankucho, Nasushiobara, Tochigi 329-2745, Japan
Tel.: +81 287 38-1503
E-mail: abuhachi86@gmail.com

Hisatomo Taki
Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan
E-mail: htaki@affrc.go.jp
Tel.: +81 29 829-8250

B Contact person

Takeshi Matsumura
Address: 658-72 Sankucho, Nasushiobara, Tochigi 329-2745, Japan
Tel.: +81 287 38-1503
E-mail: abuhachi86@gmail.com

Shoko Nakamura
Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan
E-mail: nakamuras1220@affrc.go.jp
Tel.: +81 29 829-8250

Hisatomo Taki
Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan
E-mail: htaki@affrc.go.jp
Tel.: +81 29 829-8250

2.3 Projects

A Title

1 Joint Research Program of the Institute of Low Temperature Science (10G042)

2 Global Environment Research Fund (S-9)

3 Monitoring and enhancement of pollinators for crop production

B Personnel

1
Takeshi Matsumura
Address: 658-72 Sankucho, Nasushiobara, Tochigi 329-2745, Japan
Tel.: +81 287 38-1503
E-mail: abuhachi86@gmail.com

2 and 3
Hisatomo Taki
Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
Address: 1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8687, Japan
Tel.: +81 29 829-8250
Fax: +81 29 873-1543
E-mail: htaki@affrc.go.jp

C Funding

1 Joint Research Program of the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University

2 Global Environment Research Fund, Ministry of Environment of Japan

3 Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan

2.4 Geographic coverage

A Geographic description

Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan

B Geographical position

43ﾟ03´N - 43ﾟ06´N, 141ﾟ19´E - 141ﾟ21´E

2.5 Temporal coverage

A Begin

1 April 1979

2 April 1989

B End

1 September 1979

2 September 1989

2.6 Methods

A Study sites

Bees were sampled periodically at the university campus (UC) and Botanic Garden (BG) of Hokkaido University in Sapporo (43°03´N – 43°06´N, 141°19´E – 141°21´E). UC is located northwest of the Sapporo station and covers about 1.0 × 1.5 km square. University buildings have been added continuously since 1959. BG occupies 0.3 × 0.3 km square and is southwest of Sapporo station and south of UC. The garden opened in 1886 and includes remnant native plants, patches of non-native plants, and a collection of plants from Hokkaido and neighboring areas.

Sapporo has a population of nearly 2 million and is the largest city on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. With urbanization, Sapporo has been growing and expanding continuously. The original vegetation of the Sapporo area principally consisted of deciduous broad leaf forests. It has a humid continental climate, and the adult bee season typically runs from April to October.

A Samplings

Following the methods used in 1959 (Sakagami & Fukuda 1973), bees were sampled weekly from April to September, 1979 and 1989 for 4 or, rarely, 5 hours each week at both UC and BG. These hourly samplings (indicated as A, B, C, D, and E in the data file) were performed either continuously within 1 day or over 2 or, rarely, 3 days, mostly from 9:30 to 14:30 and, rarely, until 15:30, when the weather was fine and calm. During each of the hourly samplings, any wild bees discovered on any flower or in flight were captured without particular choice. The captured individuals were preserved separately according to the flower species visited. Care was taken to not stay too long at any particular spot. When one spot attracted numerous bees due to the presence of many flowers in bloom, as many specimens as possible were collected at one time, and then other places were checked, without waiting for further arrivals of other individuals. No samples were collected at the orchard within UC or at places where certain bee species have formed nest aggregations.

C Species identification

In this study, we tried to identify as many bee species as possible. The study using the data from 1959 named only 51 species, although 102 species were reported (Sakagami & Fukuda 1973). We confirmed most of the unidentified species from 1979 and 1989 this time. All bee species names followed Tadauchi and Murao (2014).

In addition to the bee information, we digitally recorded the names of the flowers visited by each bee specimen. The flower names were written on the labels of the specimens. Mostly Japanese or local names were used for flowering plants, and then these plant names were changed into scientific names following the YList (Yonekura & Kajita 2003) and the literature on plants published by BG (The Botanic Garden Faculty of Agriculture Hokkaido University 1979, 1981; The Hokkaido University Museum 2010). However, some specimens lacked flower names. In these cases, we entered “NA” for not available.

2.7 Data structure

A Data files

The data file is named “Sakagami_bee_1979_1989.csv”.

B File format

The data file is formatted in comma-separated values (csv) format with the UTF-8 encoding.

C Header information

Line 1 describes the dataset.

D Variable definitions

In the data file “Sakagami_bee_1979_1989.csv”, the columns include the following data:

Note: “NA” means not available; “free” means not on flowers; “sp.” is an unidentified species named at the genus level.

2.8 Accessibility

A License

This dataset is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

B Location of storage

http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/JaLTER/ER_DataPapers/archives/2020/ERDP-2020-01

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We greatly acknowledge the outstanding mentor Shoichi F Sakagami. We thank Masanori J Toda for his continuous support of our study, and Ryuki Murao, Shuichi Ikudome, Katsushi Mitai, and Hirohiko Nagase for their assistance identifying bee species in Evylaeus, Hylaeus, Nomada, Sphecodes, and Coelioxys. We also thank Mifuyu Ogawa and Keiko Takano for caring for the specimens in the laboratory, Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University for the assistance identifying plants, and Teruyoshi Nagamitsu and Naoki Inari for encouraging this and future studies. This study was partly funded by the Joint Research Program of the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, the Global Environment Research Fund of the Ministry of Environment of Japan, and the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of Japan.

REFERENCES

Michener, C. D. (2007). The bees of the world (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Potts, S. G., Imperatriz‐Fonseca, V., Ngo, H. T., Aizen, M.A., Biesmeijer, J. C., Breeze, T. D., … Vanbergen, A. J. (2016). Safeguarding pollinators and their values to human well‐being. Nature, 540, 220–229. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20588.

Sakagami, S. F., & Fukuda, H. (1973). Wild bee survey at the campus of Hokkaido University. Journal of the Faculty of Science, Hokkado University, Series VI Zoology, 19, 190–250.

Sakagami, S. F., Fukuda, H., & Kawano, H. (1974). Biofaunistic surveys of wild bees. Problems and methods, with results taken at Mt. Moiwa, Sapporo. Seibutsu Kyozai, 9, 1–60.

Tadauchi, O., & Murao, R. (2014). An illustrated guide to Japanese bees. Tokyo, Japan: Bunichi Sougou Shuppan.

The Botanic Garden Faculty of Agriculture Hokkaido University. (1979). List of herbaceous plants in the botanic garden. Sapporo, Japan: The Botanic Garden, Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University.

The Botanic Garden Faculty of Agriculture Hokkaido University. (1981). List of trees and shrubs in the botanic garden. Sapporo, Japan: The Botanic Garden, Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University.

The Hokkaido University Museum. (2010). Hokudai eco‐campuss dokuhon: Shokubutuen‐hen. Sapporo, Japan: The Hokkaido University Museum.

Yonekura, K., & Kajita, T. (2003). BG Plants Wamei‐Gakumei Index (YList). Retrieved from http://www.ylist.info/index.html.