John S. Ascher is an American entomologist. He specializes in the study of Apoidea (bees as well as sphecid wasps) and has been described as "one of the world's leading native bee taxonomists." While they get less publicity than the industrious honeybee, bees indigenous to the Americas play a crucial "role in pollinating crops such as tomatoes, cranberries, alfalfa and squash, experts say. They are often more effective than honeybees as pollinators, and more resistant to problems that have decimated honeybees in the U.S. and Europe, several studies show.âÂÂ
Ascher is an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore and is the senior project manager of the Bee Database at the American Museum of Natural History.
Ascher has compiled an index of all known bee species in our biosphere, which as of 2008 totaled 19,200 types of bees. Ascher told NPRâÂÂs Talk of the Nation in 2013, âÂÂWe know that this is a big underestimate because there are vast numbers of new speciesâ¦waiting in our collections for a taxonomist to have the resources to describe them.âÂÂ
He led the data-collection effort on one project that determined âÂÂthat declining bee species tend to have larger body sizes, restricted diets, and shorter flight seasons [and] âÂÂsouthernâ bees reaching their northern distributional limits in the Northeast are increasing, a finding that could reflect a response to climate change.âÂÂ
His data was also used to generate a map of bee diversity worldwide that determined bees prefer dry, treeless landscapes in temperate zones rather than dense, humid forests, which is an âÂÂunusual distribution.â Daniel Cariveau of the University of MinnesotaâÂÂs Cariveau Native Bee Lab described the creators of the map project as âÂÂreally some of the best taxonomists in the world.âÂÂ
Ascher found the newly identified bee species Lasioglossum gotham in a New York City botanic garden.