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As a result of habitat loss and a number of additional potential causes, populations of both managed and unmanaged bees have been reported to be declining during at least the last decade in different parts of the world (Biesmeijer et al. 2006; vanEngelsdorp and Meixner 2010; Cameron et al. 2011; Bartomeus et al. 2013). Because of their important role as key pollinators, the possibility of bee decline has raised concern about the potentially disastrous impacts of their loss on ecosystem functioning, which could affect multiple trophic levels and threaten food security for humans (Allen-Wardell et al. 1998; Potts et al. 2016). Thus, the decline of bee populations is of great conservation concern, and efforts from researchers, educators and policymakers are focusing on developing effective strategies to preserve and restore bee populations across habitats types (Brown and Paxton 2009; Dicks et al. 2013). However, the development of effective conservation strategies requires an understanding of key evolutionary and ecological processes, at both historic and contemporary time scales, such as the drivers of speciation, the generation and conservation of genetic variation and the factors influencing demography, colonization, migration and foraging (Frankham et al. 2004; Epps and Keyghobadi 2015). Molecular tools can provide information relevant for a number of research themes underlying bee conservation, ranging from phylogeography and genetic variation across landscapes, to paternity assignment for colony-level foraging analyses (reviewed in Woodard et al. 2015). For example, phylogeographic studies are necessary to better understand bee diversity and to identify groups of conservation concern. These studies may be particularly relevant for the conservation of bee groups that have experienced high diversification rates, but exhibit little morphological differentiation or substantial convergent morphology (e.g. sweat bees or bumblebees, respectively). Determining Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) are a monophyletic group of insects comprising an estimated 20,000 species distributed in a wide range of latitudes, including all terrestrial ecoregions except for Antarctica. One of the special characteristics of bees is that they are insects that exclusively use pollen and nectar to feed their brood-except for a handful of necrophagous stingless bee species (Roubik 1982). As a result of their dependence on floral resources, bees are the most important pollinators for the majority of flowering plant species (>80%, Ollerton et al. 2011). The close interactions between bees and plants have shaped the deep evolutionary histories of bee families (Cardinal and Danforth 2013) and the demographic histories of bee species across natural, agricultural and urban landscapes (Dellicour et al. 2016; López-Uribe et al. 2016). In addition to managing bees for crop pollination, some bee species, including honey bees and stingless bees, have been used for centuries by humans for honey production (Crane 2013). An increasing number of bee species (e.g., Bombus terrestris, Megachile rotundata, Osmia cornifrons) are now being commercially produced for greenhouse and outdoor crop pollination in response to increases in the intensification of agricultural systems and related reductions in wild pollinator habitat (Aizen et al. 2009).

Conservation genetics of bees: advances in the application of molecular tools to guide bee pollinator conservation