@article {1618,
	title = {The effect of diet breadth and nesting ecology on body size variation in bees (Apiformes)},
	journal = {Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society},
	volume = {73},
	year = {2000},
	month = {2000///},
	pages = {180 - 193},
	abstract = {Body size in animals influences survival, fecundity, and mating opportunity. For bees, parental provisioning behavior largely controls offspring body size. Because larger offspring of many bee species have fitness advantages, selection on body size should act through selection on parental provisioning behavior and restrict body size variation of each species. Many bet species show great variability in body size, however, which may indicate that adult females are often constrained in their ability to consistently produce large offspring. We compared body size variation within bee species for two life history traits that could influence offspring body size: dietary breadth (specialist or generalist) and nesting habit (ground-nesting or cavity-nesting). We determined the head width (a reliable correlate of body size) of 2276 bees belonging to 31 bee species from five families and calculated the body size variation fur each species. Body size variation, measured as the coefficient of variation in head size, did not differ between pollen specialists (oligoleges) and pollen generalists (polyleges) across 13 pairs of closely-related, sympatric bee species of similar body size. Cavity-nesting species showed significantly greater variation in body size than ground-nesting species, which suggests that the choice of nest cavities utilized may be a more important predictor of offspring body size than parental body size. The cleptoparasite Coelioxys sayi had similar body size variation to one of its hosts, Megachile brevis. The European honey bee, Apis mellifera, showed the least body size variation of any species measured},
	keywords = {APIS, Apoidea, BEE SIZE, BEHAVIOR, BEHAVIOR-NESTING, CLEPTOPARASITE, ECOLOGY, FITNESS, LARVAL PROVISIONS, LIFE HISTORY, MEGACHILE, MORPHOLOGY, OLIGOLECTY, POLLEN, POLYLECTY, SELECTION, SIZE, VARIATION},
	author = {Roulston,T.H. and Cane, J. H.}
}
@article {1609,
	title = {Biological impediments to measures of competition among introduced honey bees and desert bees (Hymenoptera: Apiformes)},
	journal = {Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society},
	volume = {76},
	year = {2003},
	month = {2003///},
	pages = {306 - 319},
	abstract = {Foraging behaviors, host plant breadth, and agilities of social and solitary bee species differ dramatically. We illustrate how these phenomena can obscure the effects of floral resource competition from our studies on a species-rich, native bee fauna that visit the flowers of creosote bush [Larrea tridentata Coville (Zygophyllaceae)], a widespread dominant perennial plant species in the warm deserts of North America. The potential for competition among the solitary bees that visit creosote bush and honey bees was investigated by two methods: one that is widely used asks if solitary bee abundance and species diversity is less at sites with greater honey bee abundance; and a second. more novel approach that asks if pollen availability is limiting at sites with high bee biomass. We found no relationship among number of honey bees at sited and species richness and abundance of all native bees combined or of Pollen specialist species considered alone. Protein represented in the pollen of the primary host plant greatly exceeded the biomass of bees present at a site. We suggest bee populations are rarely pollen limited in this system or that competition, when it occurs, is highly episodic. Future studies of bee competition will need to assess long-term Population variation among solitary and introduced bees in habitats where floral resources can be measured for multiple flowering plant species, and where bee colony/nest dynamics can be documented, Studies of bee faunas in temperate areas are needed. This paper demonstrates some of the possible pitfalls for studies of competition among highly eusocial and solitary bees, We conclude that basic data (in bee biology and population dynamics are needed before these questions can be satisfactorily answered and, at present, little hard data are available to evaluate the competing hypotheses},
	keywords = {APIS, Apoidea, BEHAVIOR, COMPETITION, DIVERSITY, FLOWERING, GUILD, HABITAT, LARREA, METHODS, POLLEN, PROTEIN, RESOURCE LIMITATION, VARIATION},
	author = {Minckley,R.L. and Cane, J. H. and Kervin,L. and Yanega,D.}
}
