10,000 bees later: an intensive inventory of native pollinators on Martha’s Vineyard Island (Dukes County, Massachusetts)

Following a long history of entomological attention to Massachusetts’ offshore islands, and as part of an ongoing initiative to document and characterize regionally threatened and globally unique coastal plain communities, a collaborative effort was undertaken in 2010 to inventory native bees and other pollinators from Martha’s Vineyard (Dukes County, Massachusetts). This effort, the most intensive of its kind undertaken in the region, involved both direct opportunistic collecting and the deployment of approximately 4,000 bowl traps at over 50 sites between April and October 2010. The results of this work comprise approximately 10,000 determined specimens of ca. 140 species of native bees, including the first eastern record of Anthophora walshii in nearly four decades. Available comparative and historical data from northeastern mainland and island faunas are discussed.