DOI: 10.5061/dryad.tht76hf0h
title: Differences in bee community composition between restored and remnant prairies are more strongly linked to forb community differences than landscape differences

description: 1. Grassland restoration is an important tool for conserving bee
 biodiversity within agricultural landscapes. Restorations foster increases
 in local bee abundance and α-diversity, however, these measures are
 insufficient for understanding if remnant communities are being conserved.
 We compared native bee α-diversity, β-diversity, and community composition
 between restored and remnant prairies in Minnesota, USA. We then
 investigated two potential drivers of bee community dissimilarity between
 restored and remnant prairies: proportion of agricultural land surrounding
 a restoration and differences in floral community between restored and
 remnant prairies. 2. We selected ten restored prairies that lie along a
 gradient of increasing agricultural land cover, ranging from 20–85% of
 surrounding land in agricultural production. We paired each restoration
 with a nearby prairie remnant and sampled bee and floral communities
 concurrently in each restoration-remnant pair. We quantified bee and forb
 α-diversity, community composition, β-diversity, and levels of
 dissimilarity between restoration-remnant pairs along the gradient of
 agricultural development. Additionally, we quantified differences in the
 community weighted mean between restored and remnant prairies for two bee
 traits, oligolecty and tongue length, to investigate how differences in
 floral community between restored and remnant prairies may influence bee
 community composition. 3. While bee α-diversity between restored and
 remnant prairies was similar, bee composition between restorations and
 remnants were significantly different with restorations being more
 homogenous than remnants. Differences in bee community composition and
 β-diversity were not statisticlly related to agricultural landscapes or
 floral community dissimilarity, however, we found a significantly higher
 proportion of oligolectic bees in remnant prairies. This difference in
 oligolectic bees was likely related to the absence of important host
 plants in restorations. 4. ‘Synthesis and application’: Prairie
 restorations should seek to provide diverse floral resources that are of
 similar composition to remnant prairies. Specifically, providing important
 floral host plants for pollen specialist bees could improve restorations’
 ability to conserve prairie remnant bee communities.
description: This data set was collected over two years using bee sampling
 techniques that were standardized accross locations and detailed in the
 JAE manuscript titled "Differences in bee community composition
 between restored and remnant prairies are more strongly linked to forb
 community differences than landscape differences".
description: The five csv's in this data set are used by the R script
 file to recreate the analysis and plots for the JAE manuscript
 "Differences in bee community composition between restored and
 remnant prairies are more strongly linked to forb community differences
 than landscape differences" in the statistical program R. Files
 provided represent "cleaned" data ready for analysis to simply R
 code.