Museum specimens reveal loss of pollen host plants as key factor driving wild bee decline in The Netherlands.

ABSTRACT: Evidence for declining populations of both wild and managed bees has raised concern about a potential global pollination crisis. Strategies to mitigate bee loss generally aim to enhance floral resources. However, we do not really know whether loss of preferred floral resources is the key driver of bee decline because accurate assessment of host plant preferences is difficult, particularly for species that have become rare. Here we examine whether population trends of wild bees in The Netherlands can be explained by trends in host plants, and how this relates to other factors such as climate change. We determined host plant preference of bee species using pollen loads on specimens in entomological collections that were collected before the onset of their decline, and used atlas data to quan

SUBMITTER: Scheper J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4267333 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature