One of the main objectives of our project is to analyse interactions between honey bees and wild bees (and other wild pollinators) in urban habitats. Of particular interest is the question of whether there is food competition between honey and wild bees and which role environmental conditions – such as amount of flowering plants – play. We are currently conducting experiments to answer this question.
Implementing the Berlin Bee Strategy for conservation of bees and other pollinators in Berlin by optimising the protection of wild bees (funded bei Senatsverwaltung für Umwelt, Verkehr und Klimaschutz Berlin) – more info coming soon.
„Urbanisation modulates plant-pollinator interactions in invasive vs. native plant species“ has been published in Scientific Reports. The article is open access.
In this article, we show that invasive black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a “pollinator-friendly” tree and attracts not only honey bees but also wild bees and other wild pollinators. However, we also found that attractiveness of black locust decreases with increasing urbanisation.
Conference talk in Braunschweig
The German Society of general and applied Entomology (DGaaE) and the German Scientific Society for Plant Protection and Plant Health (DPG) organised a conference on insect diversity in cities (III. Urbane Pflanzen Conferenz). I contributed a talk on habitat function of urban meadows for wild bees with emphasis on urbanisation e
ffects (see Abstract in German). Due to a very diverse audience with many relevant stakeholders and decision-makers (e.g. scientists, gardeners, landscape planners, landscape architects, authorities and NGOs) it was possible to elaborate this topic from different perspectives. At the end we had very interesting – sometimes controverse – discussions to develop recommendations how to make cities more insect friendly and to comment on the new white book „Grün in der Stadt“ which was recently send out for preview. The official presentation of the white book will be in May 2017.
Disentangling urban habitat and matrix effects on wild bee species has been published in PeerJ.
Authors Fischer LK, Eichfeld J, Kowarik I & Buchholz S
Abstract In face of a dramatic decline of wild bee species in many rural landscapes, potential conservation functions of urban areas gain importance. Yet effects of urbanization on pollinators, and in particular on wild bees, remain ambiguous and
not comprehensively understood. This is especially true for amenity grassland and extensively managed wastelands within large-scale residential housing areas. Using Berlin as study region, we aimed to investigate (a) if these greenspaces are accepted by wild bee assemblages as foraging habitats; (b) how assemblage structure of bees and individual bee species are affected by different habitat (e.g., management, flower density) and urban matrix variables (e.g., isolation, urbanization); and (c) to what extend grassland restoration can promote bees in urban environments. In summer 2012, we collected 62 bee species belonging to more than 20 % of the taxa known for Berlin. Urbanization significantly affected species composition of bees; 18 species were affiliated to different levels of urbanization. Most bee species were not affected by any of the environmental variables tested, and urbanization had a negative effect only for one bee species. Further, we determined that restoration of diverse grasslands positively affected bee species richnesss in urban environments. We conclude that differently structured and managed greenspaces in large-scale housing areas can provide additional foraging habitats and refuges for pollinators. This supports approaches towards a biodiversity friendly management within urban regions and may be of particular importance given that anthropogenic pressure is increasing in many rural landscapes.