Long Point Bioliblitz documents a new bee species for the Vineyard
One of the coolest things about iNaturalist is that an observation is never completely finalized: the information it contains remains available indefinitely, always ready for someone to take another look and maybe come to a different conclusion.
This just happened with a bee I photographed (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/122399891) in the Middle Cove Frost Bottom during the June 2022 Long Point Bioblitz. An expert who has been very generous in helping me with bee identification recently took a look at the bee, had a hunch about its identity, and tagged another expert. The conclusion based on their collective knowledge was that the bee, which I had been able to identify only to the genus level, was Andrena kalmiae.
As its name suggests, A. kalmiae associates closely with Kalmia species, including Kalmia angustifolia, or sheep laurel, which is a common shrub in parts of Martha's Vineyard. But Andrena kalmia appears to be far from common: while it reportedly ranges from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, iNaturalist contains only six observations of it; there aren't any records at all of it in Bugguide.net; and a recent "Checklist of the Bees of Massachusetts" by Michael Veit, John Ascher, Joan Milam, Fred Morrison, and Paul Goldstein shows no records for it from Dukes County. So the individual photographed during the Long Point Bioblitz appears to represent a first Martha's Vineyard record. And it is, of course, one more species for our Bioblitz total, more than four months after the event itself took place.
The episode is a reminder that even major studies, like the magisterial 2010-2011 Vineyard bee survey coordinated by Paul Goldstein, almost invariably miss things, leaving discoveries to be made by anyone with a little luck and some time to spend in the field. Moreover, iNaturalist, with its ability to bring expert knowledge to bear where it is needed, and Bioblitzes, with the volume of talent they deploy and the wealth of observations they produce, are incredibly effective tools to encourage and document those discoveries.
--Matt
