Pollinating insects, such as wild bees, are declining worldwide, threatening pollination of both wild plants and agricultural crops. The main reason for these declines is intensive farming practices which leads to losses of nesting habitats and flowering food resources [1]. However, all species are not equally affected, with important consequences for which wild plant species or agricultural crops that may suffer pollination losses. This is because certain functional traits (e.g. morphological and life-history traits) make some species more vulnerable to landscape changes than others [2]. Information on which traits make species vulnerable may aid conservation of declining species, by for example, suggesting interventions that match species nesting and foraging preferences or mobility.
This project takes a landscape perspective on bee conservation by investigating how habitat availability and landscape scale complexity influence solitary bee communities.
Potential research questions are, for example:
– How is local bee abundance and diversity affected by local and landscape scale habitat availability?
– How do bee traits interact with habitat availability at local and landscape scales to shape bee communities?
– Is habitat availability (amount) or landscape characteristics most important in moderating bee community composition?
Methods
You will use existing data on cavity nesting bees, flower surveys and land-use data, collected in 54 sites across Scania, combined with data on bee traits. While there are straightforward research questions given by our landscape design, the project provides ample opportunities to analyse data in relation to research ideas developed by you. Depending on the research questions chosen, you will use methods such as GLMs and multivariate statistics. You may also extract additional spatial data on habitat availability using GIS.
Contact: Anna Persson (anna.persson@cec.lu.se) and Henrik Smith (henrik.smith@biol.lu.se)
References:
- Potts et al (2010) Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2010.01.007
- De Palma (2015) Ecological traits affect the sensitivity of bees to land‐use pressures in European agricultural landscapes. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12524