Ecological niche modeling of the rare bee Promelitta alboclypeata reveals possible cryptic differentiation across northern Africa and Arabia (Hymenoptera: Melittidae)

Abstract

The scarcely collected bee Promelitta alboclypeata with known occurrence across northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula is a typical example of the bee family Melittidae which encompasses a good number of species with sparse or disjunct distributions and particular flower preferences. Using records for 16 localities, we estimated ecological niche models for P. alboclypeata in Maxent on four sets of occurrences, to represent the disparity of the known records, most of them known from the western section of the range. Our estimates show a predicted area for the species in the northern section of the geographic extent assumed accessible to the species (mainly north Africa and the Arabian Peninsula), signaling feasible regions to survey for the presence of the species; possible ecological niche differentiation between the western and eastern populations is also signaled by the models.