Abstract
The Palouse Prairie is a severely fragmented ecosystem located in southeastern Washington and northern Idaho. Most of the Palouse Prairie's historic range has been converted into agricultural production systems, and little of the plant community remains intact. Previous studies have characterized the arthropod communities of these prairie remnants, primarily using nonspecific trapping techniques. We associated bees with specific flowering plants to investigate how the bees of the Palouse Prairie function within this fragmented ecosystem. We sampled 7 fragments of good-quality remnant Palouse Prairie weekly across the entire flowering season of 2022 and 2023. Over the course of sampling, 5791 bees were collected from inflorescences of Palouse Prairie wildflowers. The species diversity and community composition of bees and network structure of plant-pollinator interactions were examined to describe the patterns of spatial and temporal variation present in prairie fragments. Bee diversity varied among collection years, among sites, and within a sampling season. Community composition varied between collection years and within a sampling season, but not among sites. Network structure was stable between collection years but varied among sites and within a sampling season. Overall, there was variation in the Palouse Prairie bee community depending on the context of collection. This variation has conservation implications as it suggests that conserving a variety of fragments and plant species may be important to protect the full scope of the Palouse bee community.