Collections were made on Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge and Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributed specimens with information on the date (month, day, year) and collection location (coordinates). The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Pollinating Insects Research Unit, Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA (hereafter BBSL) made final identification of each specimen, and accession of specimens into their larger museum collection followed identification. The BBSL subsequently attributed specimen records with information such as species name and associated taxonomy. The BBSL also assigned each specimen a unique identification number (catalog number) so physical specimens can readily be associated with electronic data records.

Information in this dataset was exported from the BBSL larger dataset, thus it is the subset of data that pertains to the Muleshoe and Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge specimens. The BBSL uses Darwin Core terms to describe data fields for each record. The definitions below are taken directly from the Darwin Core Terms quick reference guide (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm), although some have been modified to more accurately describe information attributed to specimens in this data set. Users of the dataset should refer to Darwin Core terms reference guide if more clarity is needed about a given field, or how it might relate to information assembled in other databases.