Anthropogenic activities are triggering global changes in the environment, causing entire communities of plants, pollinators and their interactions to restructure, and ultimately leading to species declines. To understand the mechanisms…
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Pollinator-flower interactions in gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020
During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of…
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Bumble bee workers face decreased efficiency of pollen collection and reduction in size due to Sulfoxaflor exposure in late European summer
Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) are important pollinators of wild and crop plants. Despite their importance in the process of fruit and seed production on crop sites, their activity may be…
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Diets maintained in a changing world: Does land-use intensification alter wild bee communities by selecting for flexible generalists?
Biodiversity loss, as often found in intensively managed agricultural landscapes, correlates with reduced ecosystem functioning, for example, pollination by insects, and with altered plant composition, diversity, and abundance. But how…
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Wild bee larval food composition in five European cities
Urbanization poses threats and opportunities for the biodiversity of wild bees. At the same time, cities can harbor diverse wild bee assemblages, partly due to the unique plant assemblages that…
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Critical links between biodiversity and health in wild bee conservation
Wild bee populations are declining due to human activities, such as land use change, which strongly affect the composition and diversity of available plants and food sources. The chemical composition of…
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Forest landscapes increase diversity of honeybee diets in the tropics
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) depend entirely on floral resources (pollen and nectar) in their surrounding landscape to satisfy their dietary needs. Honeybee diets in temperate areas have been well studied, and there…
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Functional resin use in solitary bees
Overall, more than 30% of bee species depend on non-floral resources, such as resin. However, the importance of resin in bee ecology, particularly for solitary bees, has received very little…
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How wild bees find a way in European cities: Pollen metabarcoding unravels multiple feeding strategies and their effects on distribution patterns in four wild bee species
Urban ecosystems can sustain populations of wild bees, partly because of their rich native and exotic floral resources. A better understanding of the urban bee diet, particularly at the larval…
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Effects of three flower field types on bumblebees and their pollen diets
Agri-environment schemes, like flower fields, have been implemented in the EU to counteract the dramatic decline of farmland biodiversity. Farmers in Lower Saxony, Germany, may receive payments for three flower…
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