Historical biogeography of North American Andrena bees (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae) in the subgenus Plastandrena

The bee genus Andrena Fabricus, 1775 is one of the most diverse genera in the world, containing 1,738 species. The subgenus Plastandrena Hedicke 1933 contains ~32 species, however the true representation of species numbers is unclear. Of these, 5 species are found in North America. Each species has unique distributions that may show evidence of disjunct populations including restrictions to high elevations. To investigate these assumptions, ecological niche models were created for each species displaying species modern day distributions. Distributions were  then projected into the past to view the change of each species range over time, allowing a glimpse  into the interesting biogeograpical patterns that have shaped each of these five closely related bee species.