Tackling the Eltonian shortfall for bees using the Global Biotic Interactions dataset

Bees are the most important pollinators in terrestrial ecosystems, supporting biodiversity and food production. However, global knowledge of their interactions with host plants remains limited. To address this, we describe and refine a subset of the Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI) database focused on bee-plant interactions. We updated the taxonomy using current checklists and enhanced the dataset with metadata on geography, endemism, and human usage of plants. The resulting dataset includes 482,617unique records of interactions between 4,560 bee species and 8,651 plant taxa. Despite its scale, the dataset is affected by strong taxonomic and geographic biases, covering only 21% of described bee species and 2.5% of flowering plant taxa-primarily those used by humans-and is heavily skewed toward North America and Western Europe. Nevertheless, GloBI represents a valuable resource for incorporating bee-plant interactions into biodiversity and conservation-oriented research and representing a considerable advance in our current knowledge. By highlighting key gaps, we also provide a foundation for more targeted data collection and future synthesis efforts worldwide.