Barcoding the Caatinga biome bees: a practical review

Abstract

Bees play a critical role as pollinators in ecosystem services, contributing significantly to the sexual reproduction and diversity of plants. The Caatinga biome in Brazil, home to around 200 bee species, provides an ideal habitat for these species due to its unique climate conditions. However, this biome faces threats from anthropogenic processes, making it urgent to characterise the local bee populations efficiently. Traditional taxonomic surveys for bee identification are complex due to the lack of suitable keys and expertise required. As a result, molecular barcoding has emerged as a valuable tool, using genome regions to compare and identify bee species. However, little is known about Caatinga bees to develop these molecular tools further. This study addresses this gap, providing an updated list of 262 Caatinga bee species across 86 genera and identifying ~ 40 primer sets to aid in barcoding these species. The findings highlight the ongoing work needed to fully characterise the Caatinga biome’s bee distribution and species or subspecies to support more effective monitoring and conservation efforts.