Hi,

I am currently analyzing the difference in habitat preference of male and female bees, for my Bsc-thesis. Because i use a dataset that has not enough data to analyse separate species, I decided to use the cummulative number of bees in a genus (i.e.: Andrena sp1 + A.sp2...A.spX = Andrena_total). My intuition says that I can't conclude anyting about what 'Andrena' species males or females prefer (because the male-female ratio it is no 'average' of every andrena species, but only a ratio of all Andrena males and Andrena females combined).

I would like to validate the use of the whole genus, and test if this analysis is valid (so, if the mean Andrena sex-ratio does not vary much from the 'total' Andrena sex-ratio per habitat). (How) can I do this? To what extend can I say that the pattern shown for the whole genus is also valid for 'the average' species inside the genus?

(I am aware of the fact that in this situation no 'average' species exists, but for the sake of my thesis, it is usefull to know what the 'average species' of some large genera prefer ;) ).