{"id":79,"date":"2009-01-21T23:10:12","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T22:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpethzprd.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/?page_id=79"},"modified":"2025-12-28T16:06:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T15:06:28","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/h5>\n
Female of <\/span>Osmia (Neosmia) bicolor<\/span><\/em> (Schrank, 1781) carrying leaf pulp into her nest in a snail shell of <\/span>Arianta arbustorum to<\/span> close the single brood cell within the shell. <\/span><\/span><\/em>Foto A. Krebs.<\/span><\/h5>\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\n

Osmiini – a fascinating group of solitary bees<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The osmiine bees (Megachilidae, Osmiini), which comprise 15 genera and 1124 described species worldwide, occur on all continents except South America, Australia and Antarctica (Michener, 2007; Praz et al., 2008b; Ungricht et al., 2008; but see Gonzalez and Griswold, 2011). They are especially diversified in mediterranean and desertic climates of southern Africa, southwestern North America and the Palaearctic. With 10 genera and 663 described species, the Palaearctic osmiine bee fauna is particularly diverse.<\/p>\n

The osmiine bees are famous for their often spectacular and very diverse nest building behaviours as well as for their close relationships with flowering plants (Friese, 1923; Malyshev, 1937; Westrich, 1989; O’Toole and Raw, 1991; M\u00fcller et al., 1997; Cane et al., 2007; Praz et al., 2008a; Sedivy et al., 2008). Several Osmia<\/em> species in Europe (e.g. O. cornuta<\/em>), Asia (e.g. O. cornifrons<\/em>) and North America (e.g. Osmia lignaria<\/em>) are commercially used to pollinate the flowers of fruit trees (Bosch and Kemp, 2002). The outstanding diversity with respect to both species number and biology renders the Osmiini a most suitable model group for the study of the evolution of nesting biology and flower preferences in bees in general.<\/p>\n

The osmiine bees constitute a tribe within the family Megachilidae, which is one of the nine currently recognized families of bees (Engel, 2005; Michener, 2007; Poinar and Danforth, 2006; Praz et al., 2008b;\u00a0Hedtke et al., 2013; but see Danforth et al., 2006, and Michez et al., 2009):<\/p>\n

Superfamily Apoidea<\/strong> Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

Series Apiformes<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n

\u2020 Family Melittosphecidae Poinar & Danforth, 2006<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2020 Family Paleomelittidae Engel, 2001<\/p>\n

Family Melittidae Schenck, 1860<\/p>\n

Family Andrenidae Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

Family Halictidae Thomson, 1869<\/p>\n

Family Stenotritidae Cockerell, 1934<\/p>\n

Family Colletidae Lepeletier, 1841<\/p>\n

Family Apidae Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

Family Megachilidae<\/strong>\u00a0Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

Subfamily Fideliinae Cockerell, 1932<\/p>\n

Subfamily Megachilinae<\/strong>\u00a0Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

\u2020 Tribe Glyptapini Cockerell, 1909<\/p>\n

\u2020 Tribe Ctenoplectrellini Engel, 2001<\/p>\n

Tribe Lithurgini Newman, 1834<\/p>\n

Tribe Anthidiini Ashmead, 1899<\/p>\n

Tribe Dioxyini Cockerell, 1902<\/p>\n

Tribe Megachilini Latreille, 1802<\/p>\n

Tribe Osmiini<\/strong>\u00a0Newman, 1834<\/p>\n

Chelostoma <\/em><\/span><\/strong>group<\/p>\n

Heriades <\/em><\/span><\/strong>group<\/p>\n

Osmia <\/em><\/span><\/strong>group<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\n

Intention of the website<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The “Palaearctic Osmiine Bees” website intends to give a concentrated but concise overview on taxonomy, distribution, nesting biology and flower preferences of all osmiine bee species known to occur in the Palaearctic region. Scientific basis for the data on taxonomy and distribution is the recently published “Taxonomic catalogue of the Palaearctic bees of the tribe Osmiini” (Ungricht et al., 2008). The biological data are based on an extensive literature study on osmiine nesting biology (A. M\u00fcller, C. Praz, J. Neff, G. Le Goff and C. Sedivy, unpublished), on a compilation of flower records from the literature (A. M\u00fcller, unpublished) as well as on results of ongoing pollen-analytical studies at the Entomological Collection of the ETH Z\u00fcrich.\u00a0The information for each species will be updated and corrected in regular intervals. Important new findings or major corrections will be communicated and justified in the “Updates and Corrections” part of the website. Here, all interested readers are invited to scientifically comment on new entries by using the blog facility of the website.<\/p>\n

To keep all bee taxonomists and biologists up to date, new synonymizations and lectotypifications will also be communicated, even if they are not yet published and therefore not valid under the terms of the rules of zoological nomenclature.<\/p>\n

In addition to the species and genus accounts in the “Catalogue of Palaearctic species”, introductory pages treat Phylogeny and Classification, Biogeography, Diversity, Biology, Taxonomy, Faunistics and Fossil taxa in a more broader context, including osmiine taxa from outside the Palaearctic as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\n

Plea for collaboration<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Knowledge on the taxonomy, distribution and biology of the Palaearctic osmiine bees is still in a rather poor state. Therefore, the “Palaearctic Osmiine Bees” website is a construction site that needs to be continuously complemented with new information. Readers willing to share new distributional data, biological observations, pictures or unidentified osmiine material are warmly acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Please contact andreas.mueller@naturumweltwissen.ch<\/p>\n

Andreas M\u00fcller, ETH Z\u00fcrich, Entomological Collection<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Female of Osmia (Neosmia) bicolor (Schrank, 1781) carrying leaf pulp into her nest in a snail shell of Arianta arbustorum to close the single brood cell within the shell. Foto A. Krebs. \u00a0 Osmiini – a fascinating group of solitary bees The osmiine bees (Megachilidae, Osmiini), which comprise 15 genera and 1124 described species worldwide, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-79","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7341,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions\/7341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/osmiini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}