Synthesis and concluding remarks
Variation in bee functional traits significantly predicts patterns of
community change across a wide range of systems and contexts. As such,
this framework has become an increasingly popular tool for predicting
species-level consequences of global change. Our review highlights
common approaches to morphological trait measurement (e.g., ITD), but
also reveals knowledge gaps in bee trait data and terminological
inconsistency in classifiers applied to behavioral traits, namely diet
breadth, nesting behavior, and sociality. We do not prescribe a
particular terminology structure here, but rather emphasize that when
authors clearly define terms their data becomes useful beyond its
original publication. Increasingly, ecologists have called for the
development of ecological trait data standards and the application of
open science principles to functional trait research (Gallagher et al.,
2020; Keller et al., 2023; Schneider et al., 2019). Our analysis
highlights the need for integration of these practices into bee
functional ecology research. To promote data reuse, researchers should
rigorously define trait terminology and make trait data openly
accessible with clear metadata and methodological descriptions. Our
template for bee functional trait data sharing, along with the compiled
primary data from these studies, represents the first step toward a
consolidated database of bee functional traits. Future work toward this
aim will promote synthesis across diverse study systems and questions in
bee functional ecology.