Abstract
Monolecty in bees was defined a century ago for those species that consistently collect pollen only from the same single species of floral host. Even at the time, the term was considered “a curiosity” with little biological meaning. Here, I review its multiple problems and suggest that its utility would improve if we apply the term monolecty to those bees species that use a single genus (not species) of flowering host.
Highlights
The bee naturalist Charles Robertson concluded that bee species differed in their pollen foraging predilections
That insight arose from his years of exhaustive bee surveys around his home in Carlinville, Illinois USA, during which he methodically recorded the 441 floral hosts at which he caught 296 bee species (Robertson 1929)
He recorded foraging behavior as well, which led him to group bee species according to the taxonomic range of plants from which females collected pollen (Robertson 1925)
Summary
Robertson (1925) divided the spectrum of pollen host use by bees into polylecty (taxonomic generalists) and taxonomic specialization (oligolecty and monolecty). His coinage of oligolecty reserved the term for taxonomic pollen specialization. Monolectic bee species use single species of floral host for pollen This most clearly defined term is the least useful one, as Robertson (1925) himself implied when he judged it to be “rather a curiosity”. I assess the utility and meaning of the term in its current usage by reviewing the attributes of the presumptive cases
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