A Checklist of the Bees of Utah

Understanding bee distributions is essential to protecting these vital pollinators. Since conservation efforts and policies are often made at the state level, maintaining state-specific bee species lists can aid conservationists and policy makers. While several North American state- and province-level bee species lists have been published, few exist for the arid western states, where bee diversity tends to be higher. Here we provide a bee species list for Utah, compiled from online occurrence records from the Symbiota Collection of Arthropods Network (SCAN) and specimen records housed in the USDA-ARS Pollinating Insect Research Unit (BBSL). In total we document 1167 bee species in the state of Utah. Given the proportion of undescribed and unidentified bee species from other bee faunal surveys in Utah, we estimate that there could be up to 1500 bee species in the state. These findings highlight Utah as one of the most bee-rich regions, based on published species lists, though other western states likely house rich bee faunas. These data serve as a valuable baseline for future studies on bee diversity and declines.